The Meaning in the Episode
by MoxieGirl
Summary: One shots after most Series 7 episodes. Why did Bones behave that way? What was Booth referring to when he said such and such? This series attempts to fill in the holes left by the limitations of commercial television. It provides fluff and conversations that cold have occurred after the camera stopped rolling. Enjoy! Complete
1. Chain of Custody

___A/N The people over at Fox Broadcasting can only fit so much story into the 42 minutes of airtime between commercials. As the readers of my first fan fiction, __The When and the How: A Bone to Pick__, are well aware, I have my own ideas about what happens in Booth and Brennan's world when the cameras have stopped rolling. We know they continue to live their lives even though we don't get to watch. However, if you're like this diehard Bones shipper, you'd sure LIKE to see how their relationship is developing, and how they are working through those things that all new couples and expectant parents have to work through. __**The Meaning in the Episode**__ is a series of one-shots that intends to do just that. In all ways, I attempt to adhere to Bones cannon with the exception of three small items which are detailed a the end of this chapter, which I hope you enjoy enough to continue reading as the season progresses!___

___~ MoxieGirl (~MoxieGirl44 on Twitter)___

* * *

><p><strong>The Meaning in the Episode<strong>

**Chapter 1 Chain of Custody**

_Set to coincide with Season 7, Episode 1_

Leaving the Hoover Building after meeting with Sweets to complete the file on the Claire Seranno case, Booth turns the Sequoia west on Pennsylvania Avenue. Earlier that afternoon, Brennan had lost her balance and fallen while unpacking recently-delivered ancient vases from the Ming Dynasty circa 1412.

Two hours after the fall, Brennan had begun to feel a sharp recurring abdominal pain. Though she was convinced it was most likely nothing, she'd agreed without much resistance to stop by George Washington University Hospital to confirm her assessment. They are on the short ride to the hospital now.

Booth glances over at his silent partner who had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the fifteen-minute briefing with Sweets.

They'd made a big decision today. After five months as a couple, they'd agreed, just this afternoon, to start looking for a shared "dwelling," as Brennan calls it. The decision hadn't come easily. Brennan had spoken crassly to Booth, angering him. Her words had been hurtful, perhaps even offensive, in his eyes.

If anyone else had made the comments she had, they could have irreparably damaged their relationship. But Brennan isn't any other person, and Booth is well aware of that. He knows she doesn't have a malicious, spiteful, or selfish bone in her body. He's been learning to listen to her words and take them at face value, because that is exactly how she means them. She always says exactly what she thinks, without hesitation, and sometimes without consideration for other's feelings, though she is getting better at that.

This time, however, what she said, and the crass way she said it, had been too much. Booth was angry as a result. Justifiably so. Brennan was trying to apply rationality to a life choice that had nothing to do with logic, and in the process she'd overlooked the fact that she and Booth are now a family, and families make decisions together. Sometimes the choices that are in the best interest of the family are not rational.

"I love you," he'd said once they'd taken some time apart. "That's not rational. Us having a kid, that's not rational."

Despite having come to their own conclusions in different ways, one from the head, the other from the heart, what mattered is that they had agreed, in the end, to combine their separate households and find a new home together. This home would be both of theirs from the start. A home to start a family in.

"Everything okay over there, Bones?" There's a stillness hanging in the air between them. He knows she's working on something in that beautiful head of hers. He's not worried, just curious, and well, maybe a _little _concerned.

From now on there will be numerous discussions, disagreements, and discoveries during the process of finding a new home. Childhood memories will be taken out, dusted off, and, hopefully, put to rest, even if only temporarily. But for now, another brick in the foundation of the life they are building together has been set in place.

Brennan sighs wistfully and turns toward the father of the child growing in her womb. She smiles in the dim light of the console. Not for the first time today, she admires his bone structure. The simple act of looking at this man gives her a palpable rush of Oxytocin, the pituitary hormone responsible for reducing anxiety and creating feelings of contentment, calmness, and security.

If she were to conduct a retrospective analysis, she'd have to admit that looking at her partner has had this affect on her for as long as they've known each other. However, more recently, the intensity and duration of these feelings has increased exponentially as a result of such reinforcing behaviors as the emotive glances, the constant affection, the tender and intimate words, the intense and emotional love-making. Once they took the hard-won final step of becoming lovers, all of this has brought forward for her a feeling of belonging that she never knew was possible. Tonight, she sits in the car across from him, admiring his silhouette, and is reminded of the first time she 'brailed' his face. 'Brailing' is what Booth calls it when she runs her fingers over his body, naming each of his bones as she goes.

The first time she had brailed Booth's cranium was the morning after Mr. Vincent Nigel-Murray had been killed on the lab platform at the Jeffersonian. Worried that Vincent's killer, Jacob Broadsky, might come after those close to Booth, he had insisted that Brennan stay with him at his apartment that night.

At 4:47 AM, that next morning, Booth had welcomed her into his bed to comfort her over the lost life of her favorite intern. Though they each individually wanted to, they did not make love that night. Their relationship deserved more than spontaneous comfort sex. Booth still had issues he needed to deal with before he could give himself to her. Bones had been working with Dr. Sweets to let go of the past and be willing to risk opening her heart to the kind of intimacy she knew a relationship with Booth would require.

It wasn't until over a week later, very late on a Tuesday, or, more accurately, very early on a Wednesday, that everything had finally fallen into place for them. That, my friends, is when they first consummated their relationship and perhaps even made the child now growing in her belly.

Regardless, Brennan considered that morning in Booth's bed after Vincent's death to be the catalyst for a series of events that brought them together, for once and for always.

In a flash, she remembers everything she was thinking and feeling when she first brailed Booth's face.

* * *

><p><em>Despite her brain having been jump-started with the unsettling recollection of her intern's death the previous day and the gravity of what lay before them today, Brennan was acutely aware that she was in Booth's bed and so was Booth, just inches away. She listened to him breathe for a moment and prayed he wouldn't awaken, wouldn't return to today's harsh reality, until the last possible moment.<em>

_In their sleep they had moved apart, but were still lying in the same orientation. He was behind her, seemingly dead to the world. As quietly as she could, she rolled over to face him, leaving very little space between them. She could feel the heat of his warm body and feel his breath on the hairs of her forehead._

_For several moments, she stared up at his beautiful face. Masculine, yet boyish in repose, she couldn't help but admire his bone structure. His prominent cheekbones, his jaw line, the strong brow dropping off toward his orbital cavities and nasal ridge. The lids concealing the eyes that she could live a lifetime gazing into and it would still never be long enough._

"_I'm losing my edge," she thought to herself. "Getting mushy in my old age." She knew that what she and Sweets had been so diligently working toward for the last several months had made this softening inside her possible. Surprising herself, she conceded that she approved of this change – it brought with it a pleasing sense of contentment. Having spent many years living in the opposite, she was ready for this change._

_Gently and quietly, she pulled her left arm from under the sheets and placed her middle finger along his hairline, tracing it from his left temple to his right, noticing the horizontal crevices that age and life had etched across his forehead. Over the last six years, the nearly invisible lines had grown deeper. She knew she was responsible for the deepening and the addition of some of those lines._

_Booth's facial structure exhibited many of the markings of a good warrior, provider, and breeder. It also missed the mark in several small ways that gave him character, made him "Boothy," and endeared him to her._

_As she gently traced his right eyebrow, fascinated by its growth pattern and its softness, Booth's eyes fluttered and slowly opened. Brennan paused in her tracks, but didn't pull away._

_Booth exhaled, saying nothing, a hint of a smile on his lips. He didn't move, so she continued exploring._

"_These," she began almost inaudibly, retracing his eyebrow, "are the Superciliary Arches." She returned to the space between his eyebrows and paused as she said "Glabella."_

_Traveling down the bridge of his nose, "the Nasal Ridge," she said, and watched as he slowly closed his eyes. She stopped just short of his lips. That was dangerous territory. "Maxilla," she said in a throaty whisper._

_To the left of his nose, she gently outlined his right eye socket and traversed his cheekbone all the way to his ear, identifying as she went along, "The Zygomatic Process, the Sphenoid, and the Temporal bones."_

_Noticing Booth had reopened his eyes, she continued, outlining his jaw. "The Mandible, or the mental tuberosity," she whispered as she traced an invisible path across his chin and up the right side of his face. "The Zygomatic Arch, the Temporal bone once again, and the Occipital," she said, continuing behind his ear and into his hair at the back of his head, this time using two more of her fingers as well as the middle one. "The cervical vertebra," she said._

_As her fingers trailed down, pushing gently on each of the four top vertebrae, Booth shuddered involuntarily and smiled a dreamy smile. Moving slowly along his trapezius muscle, she reached his shoulder bone. "The clavicle," she said, following it toward the center of his chest. When her finger came to rest in the dip of his collarbone, and before she could say, "Manubrium," Booth reached up and grabbed her hand like a snake springing upon its prey. He held her hand pressed against his chest, rising and falling with each of his breaths. His eyes traveled from her neck__,__ to her lips, and eventually to her eyes where they rested. She glanced up at him, moving only her eyes._

_Being so close to his bare chest, touching his hot smooth skin, inhaling and exhaling the same warm air the he was had an intoxicating affect on her. She felt dizzy and on the verge of passing out. Her breathing slowed and her eyelids felt heavy. The thrum and rush of her heartbeat filled her ears. At the same time, every cell of her body was alert and standing at attention for whatever might happen next._

"_Is this what it's like for you, Bones?" He whispered. How could he sound so calm, she wondered. "When you look at the human body, do you see only bones?" he whispered._

"_When I look at these bones," she said, barely above a whisper, "I see a miracle." They lay there and time stopped. A million memories of the two of them flashed by for each of them … each instrumental in bringing them to this moment – and suddenly had been clear that they were all worth it._

* * *

><p>Sighing at the memory of how they were interrupted that morning by the shrill ringing of both of their cell phones, she brings herself back to the present.<em>Yes, it was all worth it,<em> she says to herself, smiling gently.

"Hey. Everything okay over there, Bones?" Booth reaches over and squeezes her knee, patting it twice before taking hold of the steering wheel again.

"I've been thinking about something Angela said to me today," she says, introspectively, looking out the passenger side window.

He can't tell from her tone if she intends to say any more. Booth takes his eyes off the road for a moment to look at her.

"What was that? What'd she say?"

"Well, when I told her I wasn't ready to move in with you, this was prior to me falling at the Jeffersonian, of course-"

"Of course," he says, very familiar with her need to be precise, marveling at how much he's come to enjoy those of her thoughts she chooses to share with him. One thing's for sure, there's never a dull moment when you're in love with a scientist, especially when that scientist also possesses a mind creative enough to write several best-selling crime novels.

"Angela said, 'You wound up in foster care. That would make anybody scared about starting a family'." Bones turns to stare at Booth's silhouette again.

"She's right," Booth says with an affirming nod of his head, switching back and forth from looking at her, and paying attention to the road.

She looks at him, quizzically. "But … I never said anything about foster care, Booth," she says, warily. She pauses and turns to look out the front windshield at the red lights of the cars ahead of them. It's already dark, the taillights ahead turning into starbursts as they hit the windshield and bounce off her corneas.

Booth waits, he can tell she has more to say; she's just formulating her thoughts. He reaches over, resting his hand on her shoulder, giving her trapezius several firm affectionate massage-quality squeezes.

Brennan slowly closes her eyes, rocking slightly, sideways, as he pushes and pulls on her shoulder muscle. She inhales, filling her lungs as much as possible considering she has a gestational biped from the hominid species stealing space from her other organs, and decreasing her lung's expansion capacity.

_"Hmmmmmmmmmmmnnn,"_ is the low sound emanating from somewhere in her chest as she exhales with a long, slow sigh.

"She just said it. Out of nowhere." she says, almost whispering, a catch in her throat.

"Are you okay?" He asks, taking a long look at her, sliding his warm hand further toward her neck, resting it there. The warmth of his touch soothes her. More Oxytocin. She closes her eyes again and succumbs to the peacefulness washing over her.

"Booth, I find that I agree with Angela's assessment of the cause of my reluctance. I do find myself wondering what will happen to our child if anything were to happen to us."

Her words hang in the air, a naked truth from her core. Opening her eyes, she turns toward Booth. Crossing her chest with her right arm, she lays her hand on top of his, which still rests on her shoulder. She presses firmly on the back of his hand, curling her fingers around his, insinuating her thumb into the warm space between her trapezius and the palm of his hand. She raises that shoulder and leans her head toward it, pressing her ear against their hands for just a moment.

"When you were abandoned, Bones, you didn't have any family to fall back on, but you and me? We have family. We have friends," he assures her.

"I know it is irrational, this concern of mine. We do have family here, even if they aren't biological relatives. My parents' case was a deviation from the norm," she says, "and you are making sense. Besides, the chances of what happened to me ever happening to our -"

"A billion to one, Bones," he interrupts, wanting to immediately calm her fears. "Go easy on yourself. Okay?" When he takes his hand off of her shoulder and places it on the steering wheel, his absence is palpable. Bones imagines the heat lifting off of her shoulder and dissipating into the air like the final wisps of smoke from a campfire. Though he's still sitting there in the car beside her, she feels a minute sense of loss.

"Given your experience, this is a legitimate fear. Okay?" Booth takes a right onto Constitution Avenue, stealing a glance at his partner. "I would be more worried if you didn't have this concern, these thoughts!"

"Really?" She's surprised, wanting what he says to be true.

"Really," he says confidently, nodding, rocking slightly forward for emphasis. He adjusts himself in his seat, leaning his left elbow on the car door, one hand loosely guiding the steering wheel. "Absolutely, Bones." He looks over, locking eyes with her, and smiles empathetically.

"I find your certainty comforting, but there's more," she says, turning toward him in her seat. "Angela indicated that it wasn't necessary for me to tell her I was afraid, because she already knew." She pauses. "Booth, how did she know it if I wasn't even aware of it?"

"Look, Bones, that's one of Angela's super powers, okay? She's freakily intuitive. And she's your best friend. She knows how you tick."

"I don't know what that means. I don't tick. Do I?" Her voice goes up an octave when she asks the question, her brows knit together.

"Like a clock," he says, nodding. "She knows how you work, how you think. She might not always understand it, but she'd very good at figuring it out. She knows what you value … rationality, empirical proof, precision, process, loyalty, and _family."_

"Okay, she knows me," she nods hesitantly. "A lot of people know me. Am I that easy to read, Booth?" Her voice cracks when she says this. She feels exposed and unremarkable, and this makes her uncomfortable.

"Not to everyone, but she's your _best _friend. You've said she's like a sister to you, right?"

"Yes, though it isn't possible for her to literally be my sister since we don't share the same parents. However, I do appreciate the parallel you're drawing for my benefit," she says, tilting her head and reaching over to touch his arm, smiling at him. He releases the steering wheel and takes her hand, sliding his fingers between hers, resting their joined hands on his thigh.

Brennan thinks for a moment. "She _used _to be my best friend," she says, looking out the window.

"Wha- What? Don't tell me your discussion ended up in an argument -"

"Oh, no. Of course not," she says, gently chiding him. "An argument could never devalue my relationship with Angela."

"Then -" Booth shakes his head, confused. "I don't get it. Why isn't she your best friend anymore?"

"'_Best'_ implies the one above all others. There can only be one best, Booth, just like you said when we worked the polygamist case. There's always one you love the most, more than all the others, right?" She looks over at him, seeking confirmation that he recalls the case of the victim who had three wives and a pregnant girlfriend.

"I remember," he says, a smile slowly spreading across his face. He remembers their discussion the night they solved the case. That was when he assured her that there was always one you love the most. He was dating Hannah at the time, but he was thinking of Bones.

"Even in the material world," continues Bones, squeezing the fingers intertwined with hers, "while two substances or masses may appear empirically identical, there will always be a slight variation, an aberration, perhaps not discernible to the naked eye, but it is there," she explains. "There can only be_one_, that is superior; one who is above, and to the exclusion of all others. And for me, that one is you," she explains in an unsentimental tone, shrugging. This is not an emotional statement for her. It is an irrevocable, incontrovertible truth. That is how it is for her.

Unsentimental as it may have been for her, her declaration hits him in the chest like a blacksmith's 4142 alloy steel hammer on a solid steel anvil. He's silent. She never wavers in her love, her affinity, her loyalty to him. She's there, like a rock, strong and dependable. Always has been, without question. He loves this about her, and it still takes his breath away.

She loved him through a geographic separation, telling him upon return that while in the Maluku islands, she hadn't had the time or the inclination to seek affectionate male companionship. She was still loving him when he was in the midst of a misguided attempt to prove he could move on after she refused to take their relationship to the next step. She was loved him even when he had his head up his ass, licking his wounds for months after that relationship fell apart.

Brennan was there through it all. He came face to face with this reality three days after Vincent Nigel-Murray was killed. Many of the things Brennan had done for him, he had been blind to. Even when she broke his heart, it was out of her love for him and her fear that she would eventually hurt him and their relationship irreparably. She just couldn't do that, even if it meant hurting him less severely for a short term.

Without a doubt, she could provide him with tangible, repeatable, double-blind study-quality evidence that she has always loved him, but she never would. That's not her way. And he would never ask her to. He doesn't have to. He feels it in his gut. He doesn't need any other kind of proof.

"Wow," he says, pursing his lips, feeling a stinging sensation in his eyes, his eyebrows raised in humble surprise. He shakes his head as if he just saw something that couldn't possibly exist.

"Booth, I've told you this before, why do you sound surprised?"

"Because," he says after a moment, "well, I thought women have two best friends, right? Their … partner and a girlfriend."

"Booth, the term 'friend' is genderless," she contends. "And if we go by the definition, there can still be only one," she looks straight at him. Another one of her truths. "_You _are my best friend, Booth," she says, squeezing their joined hands once again, gesticulations with her other hand for emphasis.

"I guess I assumed … aren't women closer to each other than they are to their partners? I've known lots of women, married and single who have said they are closer to their girlfriends than they are to their spouses, emotionally at least."

"Now, that's frightening," she mumbles, her eyebrows raising as high as they can go. She stares out her side window.

"Why is that?"

"I love Angela," she says, sincerely, releasing her grip from his hand, crossing her arms and shaking her head. "I will always love Angela. But you are the one I choose to share my life with, to give my body to -"

When she makes statements like this, his insides do a flip-flop. Even when she's explaining in a neutral tone, like she is now, he finds her powerfully sexy, her words unmistakably intimate, and it takes his breath away. If they were at home, he'd get her naked and horizontal so fast she wouldn't even know what had hit her. It amazes him how oblivious she can be to the effect this has on him.

" - to start a family with, Booth," she continues, "to go on vacations with, to argue and reconcile with, to make the most important decisions in life with," she says, her shoulders raised as if to say, 'this should be completely obvious.' "How foolish would I be to risk entering into a relationship with you, invite you to participate in all of those things with me, if you were anything _less_ than what constitutes, for me, my _absolute_ best friend?" She looks at him. He says nothing, staring forward, his eyes on the road, a lump in his throat. He swallows dryly.

Veering to the right onto Virginia Avenue, he takes a right at 23rd street, then a right into the parking lot of George Washington University Hospital. He pulls into a parking spot as close to the front door as he can, and puts the gear into park, but leaves the car running.

"Bones, you never cease to amaze me," he says, dropping his chin to his chest, then turning to look over at her, clearing his throat, not knowing what else to say. _I am so in love with you. Will you marry me,_ he thinks. Earlier this morning, he'd surprised her by declaring that one day _she_ would propose to_him_, rather than the other way around. The fact that her response had been, _"That's ridiculous,"_ rather than her usual, _"That would __never__ happen,"_ was not lost on him.

"I'm surprised you would think that I would accept any less for myself, she says.

"You are so in love with me, it's almost embarrassing," he teases her gently, looking sideways at her, a goofy grin on his face.

"I am. I can't help it," she says, "your quite pleasing to look at, and to touch," she says, raising a suggestive eyebrow, and a smirk at him. Then she quickly adds, "Wait! I call do-over! I have a better answer … ask me the question again."

He chuckles. Never a dull moment. "I knew teaching you about the 'do-over' would bight me in the ass one day," he chuckles. "How could there possibly be a better answer than that? What you already said has taken me from zero, to I want to rip your clothes off, in under two seconds!" He shoots her one of his most beautiful grins.

"Come on," she whines, reaching over and poking him insistently on the arm.

"What? You are so in love with me, it's almost embarrassing? That wasn't a question -" He shrugs.

"No, I'm not in love with you," she jumps in, speaking in an exaggerated tone, "I'm just using you to satisfy me sexual needs," she says, grinning at him coquettishly with a wide-eyed stare and wiggling eyebrows. He's speechless. Delighted. And amused.

After a beat, they both crack up. Booth drops his forehead into his hand. "I've created a monster," he mumbles, his shoulders shaking as he continues to chuckle. "I'm just a Boy Toy to you, aren't I?"

"Bingo, baby," she blurts, grinning ear to ear. Her sense of humor has been improving over the last five months. Her comedic timing, however, is questionable. _'It's __all__ in the timing,'_ he'd had to explain to her at one point.

"Now _that _was perfect timing," acknowledges Booth, impressed, still chuckling. He looks admiringly at the mother of his unborn child, grinning ear to ear.

"You like that, huh?" She grins back at him.

"Well done," he says, raising his fist toward her for a congratulatory fist bump. She reciprocates and they both chuckle for a while. "Shall we go in, or do you wanna hop in the back seat we me and make out for a while," he asks, extending his arm across to the back of her seat, leaning toward her suggestively. He looks at her like a hungry tiger looks at Bambi right before he pounces.

She leans her head to the side and squints at him, chuckling appreciatively. However, the prospect of the two of them, with her swollen belly between them, attempting to make out in the back seat of the Sequoia, sounds beyond uncomfortable.

"As wonderful as that sounds, _Casanova,_ I don't think all three of us would fit," she says, apologetically, yet amused.

"Then I'll settle for some hot, front seat lip-locking," he says, leaning across the console and taking her face in his hands. He kisses her thoroughly, nibbling on her lips. He drags his chin up and down her jawbone because he knows that drives her crazy. After one more lingering wet sexy kiss, he leans back and just looks at her. She smiles a twinkly smile into his eyes.

"Wow," she says breathlessly, "If I weren't pregnant already, I would be after a kiss like that!"

Booth interprets that as a request for an encore. He leans in and kisses her once more, quickly, on her lips.

"You're happy," she says, touching his face.

"Yes, I am" he says, sighing, "and in a little bit of pain," he says pulling at the knees of his pants, wiggling around a bit, adjusting himself in his seat.

"We better get in there while you can still walk," she says, sighing through a Bones-y grin. "If we wait much longer, they might think you're a patient suffering from priapism. You'd be surprised how many people end up in the ER seeking relief from erections lasting longer than four hours. I understand priapism is a very serious and extremely painful condition."

"Can we please not talk about this?" Booth grasps the steering wheel, but leans back on the headrest, closing his eyes for a moment, trying to think of things like fuzzy bunnies, his mother, hockey, anything asexual. He shakes his head side to side. _Never a dull moment, though I could use one right now,_he chagrins.

"Did you know that the word 'penis' is actually taken from the Latin word for _tail_ -"

"I do not. Have. A tail!" Insists Booth incredulously, turning his head to look at her, giving her the stink eye. "Come on, let's go."

He opens his door and gets out of the car. Brennan opens her door, but doesn't move. Booth comes over to her side of the Sequoia and looks at her quizically.

"I think I need help," she says, apologetically. He takes her arm and helps her lift her considerable girth out of the SUV. "After this afternoon's loss of balance, I'm not taking any more chances," she says.

"That would be a very good idea, Bones," he says, nodding and closing the car door behind her. "Want me to get a wheelchair?"

"I'm not paralyzed, Booth! I'm perfectly capable of walking the 200 feet to the Emergency room door," she says, walking on ahead of him to prove her point. Now he's the one not moving. She stops after fifteen feet, turning to look back at him. "Are you going to go into the emergency room with me, or what?"

"Yep. Let's do this thing," he says, shaking his head. He's still thinking about the tail thing. Sometimes he wishes he had a less than extraordinary girlfriend, but that is only on very rare occasions. He chuckles to himself, shaking his head.

* * *

><p>They're seated in the waiting room. Brennan picks up where they left off with their earlier conversation.<p>

"So, how did Angela know I had been thinking about ending up is foster care when I hadn't said anything to indicate that I was?"

"Well, as I said, intuition is Angela's _super power_. She knows you. She knows you life story. Wouldn't you say she knows what makes you happy, what angers you, what bothers you?" He's flipping through an outdated glossy magazine that has seen better days.

"I guess if I analyze our experiences together, I would find evidence that that is an accurate statement. Angela is very good at reading physical queues. Perhaps she also applies anecdotes from her experiences of me when I've exhibited those emotions -"

"Bones, doesn't it stand to reason that she would know, she could intuit, what concerns you greatly?"

She thinks for a moment, tossing a ratty Readers Digest back onto the hard waiting room chair beside her.

"Perhaps."

"So, couple that with what she knows of your childhood."

She thinks for a moment.

"She's seen you go through the ordeal of finding your brother … how much you love him, and how much his abandonment of you hurt you, right?"

"Well that was not all his fault. He did call me every year on my birthday and … I- I never answered or returned his calls. I didn't realize that I was pushing _him_ away," she admits sheepishly.

"Right, but the point is, Angela understands that, and the impact your parents' abandonment had on you, and how painful it has been for you to have missed those years with your mother."

"But I don't see how -"

"-you said you _have_ been thinking about those years right after your parents left, right?" He cuts her off mid-sentence. "She's probably noticed an expression, a look in your eyes, that she recognizes as childhood fear or pain."

"Well, as I said before, I have been thinking those thoughts. Apparently, it is quite natural during pregnancy. It's part of the nesting process. It is also hormonally driven, just like everything else seems to be lately. At least according to, "_What to Expect When You're Expecting,"_ which is not a very technical manual at all, by the way. I expected a great deal more explanation about fetal development, nutrition, and the birthing process. They only had four pages on nutrition and exercise. Can you believe that? I found the book unsatisfactorily lacking."

Booth chuckles. "Bones, that book is geared for mothers who are not as interested in the physiology of pregnancy. It's written to assure new expectant moms that everything is going to be okay, that their baby is going to be fine."

She furrows her brow. "What a waste," she says. "The writers missed a perfect opportunity to educate new mothers who are about to be responsible for the growth and development both physically, emotionally and intellectually of a real, miniature, human being. If that is all that expectant mothers are going to read, they might just as well just fly it, Booth."

"Fly it?"

"Yes. You know … enter into parenthood completely unprepared, make it up as they go along. They might as well fly it."

Booth laughs. "It's 'wing it, Bones. Maybe you should check into what 'Gray's Anatomy' has to say about pregnancy."

"The television show, right?" she says, looking right at him, one eyebrow raised, a sly grin on her face.

"Wow, that's two well-timed jokes in one night," he says, "Nice!" He nods and grimaces with approval. Fist bump. Brennan smiles a self-satisfied smile.

"Angela advised me to focus on what life was like during those years before my parents disappeared -"

"You can do that, Bones, if you want. But you and me? We're not Christine and Max Brennan. We're not my parents either. We're Booth and Bones. We'll do things differently than they did. We'll make-up our own definition of family and good times, right?"

Brennan nods, pressing her lips between her teeth.

After a moment, Brennan says, "Did I tell you I had a dream last night?" She waits for Booth to look up at her from a battered 2009 issue of _Motorcycle Magazine._

"I dreamed I was on a roller coaster. The kind they have at Coney Island," she begins, looking for recognition in his eyes.

He nods, tilting his head to the side as if he can hear her better that way.

"I asked the conductor if he could slow down the ride for me."

"And what happened?"

"He said the ride only went one speed," she says, a dejected expression on her face.

"Hm," he says, putting his arm around her and pulling her sideways toward him. "Interesting."

She nods, leaning her head against his temple. "Anyway, I find that I truly am anxious. I wish things could slow down, even just a little, so I could catch my breath. I find that I feel the need to be cautious, and that's why I fall back on rational thought processes. Logic gives me comfort," she says, lifting her head and looking from one of his chocolate brown eyes to the other. That's how close they are sitting. "I really did not mean to upset you today, Booth."

"I appreciate that, Bones," he says.

"I just – I find myself at a loss for how to reason my way out of the irrational fear of my child ending up alone in the world," she says, a sorrowful expression on her face. She looks down at her hands in her lap, rotates her mother's ring around her right ring finger, then sneaks a peek out of the corner of her eye. She feels vulnerable, a sensation she still hasn't gotten used to even though she's been working on getting comfortable with the unknown, the uncontrollable, for quite some time.

"That's normal," says Booth, lifting her chin so she will look at him. "Even for extraordinary people." He flashes her a compassionate smile and kisses her on the forehead, pulling her close again. They sit like this for another five minutes. Brennan is lost in thoughts about her childhood for a moment.

"One other thing, Booth?"

"What's that?"

"Even if I do not understand your irrational fear of being like your father, I do respect it. I know you are a very different man than he is. My assessment of your behaviors and actions is that you are much more like Pops. My point is, I want you to tell me these things. If we both can identify and acknowledge our irrational fears, I think it will help us understand each other."

Booth nods, thinking how far she has come in the last year.

"I will still make mistakes, Booth I will get caught up in what is rational and logical. And I will hurt your feelings. All of a sudden, he thinks she looks much younger than her chronological age. "But, please know that I am trying," she says, with a supplicant look on her face.

"I usually do. Today was just -" he says, shaking his head and shrugging.

"I know," she whispers, nodding. "And right now, I need you to touch me," she says emotionally. "Every once in a while, for no … explainable reason … I need to be touching you." She shrugs with one shoulder, almost apologetically, and looks up at him. "Your touch has a calming affect on me." She smiles, for the first time since she started talking about her dream, her shoulders finally relaxing.

"I know what you mean," he says, a slow warm smile growing across his face. He offers her his hand, the one that's not wrapped around her. She takes it, sandwiching it between both of hers, resting them on her thigh. His hands are just the right size. Not so broad that she feels like a child, but wide and solid, his fingers strong and long enough to wrap around hers, making her feel protected and cherished. She never expected to enjoy holding hands as much as she does, even with Booth.

"Thank you," she says, sighing, and shaking her head. "This … whole experience is not what I expected," she says, chuffing, then chuckling nervously.

"I know what you mean," he says again, sinking his nose into her hair, planting a kiss above her ear.

"Dr. Brennan," calls a young man in scrubs holding a chart and pushing an empty wheel chair.

"That's us, " says Booth, raising a finger, standing, and nodding at the nurse.

* * *

><p>"Dr. Carmichael," Booth shouts down the hall at the disappearing back in a white lab coat. The diminutive woman with grey hair and silver rimmed glasses continues walking but makes a quick U-turn, and returns to stand in front of Booth.<p>

"Doctor, are you absolutely positive that this is just Braxton Hicks contractions, practice contractions?" Booth peaks over his shoulder toward the curtained area thirty feet away where Brennan is busy putting her clothing back on. "Because she will know. She's freaky like that. If you aren't being completely honest, she will know -"

"Mr. Brennan," says Dr. Carmichael, calmly, closing her eyes for a moment, then dropping her chin almost to her chest to peer over her glasses at him. "Mr. Brennan, I assure you, that is all this is. Your wife is healthy, and strong, and that baby is perfect at this point. The safest place for a baby is inside the uterus. It's when they come out that the trouble begins. So, breathe. Take a breath. She's fine! Okay?"

Booth relaxes, and does take a breath, watching Dr. Carmichael's face closely, searching for any trace of … anything other than utter confidence. "Okay," he says. "Okay." He inhales deeply, then says, "Thank you." He turns on his heal to return to Brennan, but stops and faces Dr. Carmichael again. "Doctor?"

"Yes, Mr. Brennan?"

Booth stares at the floor for a moment, chuckling, then looks up at her and says, "It's Agent Booth. Seeley Booth," and retraces his steps back to Brennan's curtained cubicle.

"I've been thinking about a possible solution to your concerns," he says, looking over at her. They are both more relaxed now, knowing that their baby is healthy and unharmed. Brennan has a bruised elbow and thigh which will fade away, but other than that, everything is exactly as it should be. "You know, about our child being left alone in the world?"

She looks at him, a complacent smile on her lips. She waits to hear what he has to say.

"What would you think of having Caroline draw up some legal paperwork for us?"

"What do you mean? I told you I don't need any kind of relationship prenuptial agreement, Booth. If I didn't trust you as much I do, I wouldn't be in this relationship."

"Oh, no. No, no, no," he assures her. "No, I'm thinking about some kind of, I don't know, chain of custody thing … you know, on the very outside chance that something were to happen to the both of us." Neither of them has mentioned that their jobs involve dangerous, sometimes life-threatening situations. They don't have to; they are both well aware of the potential risks of their chosen professions.

"What do you mean?" She chews on the inside of her bottom lip, concentrating on is words.

"Okay, like, something that says that in the event that anything should happen to us, our child would go live with Angela and Hodgins -"

"Oh!" she blurts, her hand flying to her mouth. This is a great idea.

"And it could state that if anything were to then happen to Angela and Hodgins, our child would then go live with Russ and his family. Now, what's the likelihood that something would happen to all six of us at the same time, huh?"

"That is perfect, Booth!" She is overwhelmed with excitement and relief. "Oh, that is such a near-perfect solution," she says. "Nothing can be 100% perfect, but that comes within -"

"It comes pretty close, right?" he says, feigning arrogance. "That's why you keep me around, Lady!" he chuckles.

"How would you like to have intercourse with a pregnant woman when we get home?" she asks with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

Booth, shakes his head. "No, that doesn't appeal to me in the least," he says, shooting her a grin across the car, "But I'd be more than happy to make wild passionate love to one," he says with a wink that causes a chain reaction in her brain, sending a shock of adrenaline coursing through her blood stream.

"Oh hohhh," she says, shoving his shoulder, feigning irritation. "You had me worried there for a moment. A very short moment, " she chuckles. "I've never known you to turn down an offer of inter - love making," she says, pinching his cheek.

"Hell no! You could be twelve months pregnant, covered in mud and dried leaves, having just eaten a raw onion and clove of garlic, and I'd still accept that offer, " he says, grinning at her.

They both crack up, because they both know it is an absolutely true statement.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Five months is a fairly hefty chunk of storyline between the end of S6 and the beginning of S7, folks! There's also a lot, emotionally and developmentally, that would have needed to happen to bring Booth and Bones together as a couple satisfactorily. Therefore, as the crafter of this series, I have taken a few liberties ... liberties which you will not find it difficult to swallow. If you have read my other story, The When and the How: A Bone to Pick, you will know exactly what I'm referring to here.

_1) It felt out of character to me, after all these years, that Booth and Bones' romantic relationship would begin with spontaneous comfort sex after VNM's death. **As Booth would say disappointedly, "That was our moment? That's it?" **Despite what HH is purported to have said, I just can't see that happening. Therefore, I have added a week to the timeline between VNM's death and the first glorious incidence of what we are all certain must have been some wildly mind-blowing whoopee, right? During that week, B&B do a lot of talking, a lot of kissing, and have a ton of fun while working a case almost exclusively out of town, which gives them some privacy and room to figure some things out. In the process, they make a conscious decision together to move forward. There's lots of sizzle between them as they start to work things out, and it makes a lot more sense than spontaneous comfort sex, IMHO._

_2) Before they could come together, Booth had to do some healing. In my version, (which is fully detailed in my other fanfic, The When and the How: A Bone to Pick) he's had an epiphany and is able to snap out of his post-Hannah, I'm angry at womankind funk. You won't see the epiphany here, though there may be a reference every once in a while._

_3) Also, Brennan was still in need of some support in overcoming her past, feeling comfortable taking risks, and developing a fully open heart. In my version, she spent some time working with Sweets on this. You may see references to this, also._

_If you can stomach what I've warned you about, move forward ... regardless, your feedback is important to me, please do not be shy to provide it!_

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><p><em>So - can you handle it?<br>Did this mess too much with your view of what might have happened?_

_Hopefully not! Regardless, I hope that you enjoyed this, that you will leave a **review** to share your _  
><em>opinionsthoughts, and that you will come back when I post future "The Meaning in the Episode" chapters__._

* * *

><p><strong>In the meantime, please join me on Twitter where I go by MoxieGirl44.<strong>  
><strong>On twitter, you will notice I frequently do the following:<strong>

**::::: Tweet about chapter progress, _:::::_**  
><strong><em>::::: P<em>rovide clues to the chapter under construction, _:::::_**  
><strong><em>::::: C<em>hoose a Tweeting reader to preview a chapter before it goes live _:::::  
><em>::::: Share the chapter music links <em>:::::<em>__**  
><strong><em>::::: <em>Drop quotes from the upcoming chapter _:::::_**

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><p>Thank you to my regular, and much appreciated <strong>Readers and Reviewers<strong> who lighten my days and help me laugh at myself when I get stuck:

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><p>To review, click that little purple hyperlink that says<strong> "Review This Chapter"<strong>  
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**THANK YOU FOR READING!**

**~MoxieGirl  
>~MoxieGirl44 on Twitter <strong>


	2. Conceived of Overflowing Love

**If you've already read this chapter, but haven't seen the new one as of Nov 18th,  
>check the other chapter listed in this story. We are experiencing a little technical difficulty! Thanks!<br>**

_A/N The people over at Fox Broadcasting can only fit so much story into the 42 minutes of airtime between commercials. As the readers of my first fan fiction, The When and the How: A Bone to Pick, are well aware, I have my own ideas about what happens in Booth and Brennan's world when the cameras have stopped rolling. We know they continue to live their lives even though we don't get to watch. However, if you're like this diehard Bones Shipper, you'd sure LIKE to see how their relationship is developing, and how they are working through those things that all new couples and expectant parents have to work through. **The Meaning in the Episode** is a series of one-shots that intends to do just that. I hope you enjoy them! ~ MoxieGirl (~MoxieGirl44 on Twitter)_

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><p><strong>Chapter 1 Conceived from Overflowing Love<br>**_Season 7, Episode 2_

Ever since they'd headed for home from the Jeffersonian this evening, Booth had been weaving together an idea. After he'd accepted Brennan's apology and told her it was enough for him that she had made one, she'd said she had 'more'. He grinned and moved in closer to her on the couch, close enough to be within kissing distance.

"I'll always take more, what do you have in mind?" He had been expecting she was referring to something involving some serious physical contact, but what she had for him was probably the only thing that could top that today. That was when she surprised him with the video of this morning's ultrasound.

"So you found the boy?" asks Booth, referring to her newest squint, as he fiddles with the audio settings on his speaker system. There's a black cord now running from his tuner up to the bed where Brennan sits waiting for him.

"I didn't find him, Booth. He came back," she says, scooting over to Booth's side of the bed. "He said he realized quitting was a coward's way out." After a pause and several adjustments of the pillows behind her, Brennan continues. "You know I prefer to sleep and to sit on my side of the bed, Booth. Being on your side disorients me and is uncomfortable."

"I know it does, but just stick with me on this, Bones. I'm setting up an experience for us, okay?" Booth sits back on his haunches, surveying his electronic equipment. Satisfied that this will give him the desired result, he grabs two long slim remote controls and heads over to Brennan's side of the bed, flicking off the lamp on her bedside table. "We can switch back when we're finished here, but I think you're gonna like this," he says, sliding under the covers, the sheets still warm from her having been there a moment ago. "So you said he'd read one of your papers before?"

"Oh, yes. _Postmortem Dismemberment Recovery and Analysis_. It was a case report I wrote for the Journal of Forensic Sciences over Thanksgiving break the year I presented my dissertation."

"You wrote a paper over Thanksgiving weekend?" He looks at her in disbelief. For many years she hadn't had any family to spend holidays with, and he knows this. He still can't get over the fact that she usually takes holidays to travel for research.

"Why are you looking at me like that, Booth?" She stares at him from his side of the bed, rocking back and forth trying to get comfortable. "How long do you think this is going to take? I'm just not used to the mattress on your side. What's your sleep number, anyway?" She reaches for the remote laying in the middle of the bed.

"Don't touch my sleep number!" Booth grabs the white slim remote from her. "Never mess with a man's sleep number," he says, holding the remote up to his lips as if speaking into a microphone. He puts the remote over on the bedside table where she can't reach it. "I hate it when you mess with my settings. Just have a little patience. You are gonna love this." Booth nods, giving her one of his proud grins.

Brennan smirks, wiggles around again, and sighs, resigned to the fact that she's just going to be uncomfortable for a while. "It was a fascinating case," she continues excitedly now, pausing to smile at him, pleased at his interest in what she loves to talk about more than almost anything. "There were three sets of disarticulated and incomplete human remains."

"What? Like in a burial mound or something? Where was this?" Booth furrows his brow. He's used to her sharing the gory details of her work. It helps that her anecdotes focus mainly on cleaned bones. She doesn't enjoy the wet work any more than he enjoys looking at it or hearing about it. Somehow, once the bones are cleared of everything else, they don't seem as much like a human being.

"Yunling mountains. In Lanping, Nujiang," she tosses off as if he knows where that is.

"What? Is that a country?" Booth raises one eyebrow as he scoots close enough to her that they are thigh to warm thigh.

When he raises his left arm and drapes it over her shoulders, she scoots over and nestles in closer to him, fitting perfectly in the space under his arm. She leans her back against his chest and turns to face the entertainment center on the wall to their left. Turning back to face him for a moment, she smiles at him, leans close, and kisses him quickly, sighing a happy and contented sigh.

Adjusting the sheets and the chenille blanket so they cover both of them, she turns back to the television, ready for this evening's entertainment. This is an aspect of being in a committed relationship that she never imagined she'd enjoy as much as she does: watching television together. They take turns choosing the show, and one of them usually ends up passing out in the process, but it's enjoyable nonetheless. Tonight, it's Booth's turn to choose the movie or show.

Booth reaches over and turns her face back toward himself, kissing her again, sweetly, on the lips, then the nose. "I love you like crazy, you know," he says, grinning ear to ear, still holding her by the chin.

"There is substantial irrefutable evidence to suggest that what you are saying is accurate," she chuckles, nodding, "In regard to the loving me part, at least. To what degree one must love another to the extent that they become certifiably non compos mentis, has yet to be determined," she says, raising her eyebrows and smiling into his eyes. "However, I am fairly confident that I understand what you are saying. And … I return that love with all my metaphorical heart," she says, sighing audibly as he plants adoring kisses and nibbles her soft skin from behind her ear all the way up to her jaw, then finally her lips, as she's finishing her sentence.

"A Provence. In China," she says, after he kisses her the last time. "That's what Nujiang is," she says, continuing their previous discussion as she turns back to face the entertainment center. "The remains exhibited the markings of having sustained extensive blunt force trauma. We were able to prove, using pig bones -"

"Maybe we could return to the original point? The kid," he says, interrupting, and gently bringing her back to the topic of the new intern.

"Oh, yes. The new intern, Mr. Abernathy," she recalls, nodding. "He's is quite a remarkable individual and will make a brilliant forensic anthropologist, if he continues along the same academic trajectory he has been on to date. Did I tell you he completed his undergraduate degree in under two years, then graduated at the top of his class when he was sixteen years old?" She looks back at him, askance.

"Yes, you did. Twice. And also that he says he has a _'knack for thinking'," _Booth makes air quotation marks with his one free hand. "He read you paper." Booth reminds her. "About dismemberment?"

"Yes!" she says, a smile creeping across her lips. "He said he attributes his choice to abandon his disruptive antisocial behaviors to an understanding he gained from reading that paper."

"Cam said he had problems with the law as a juvenille and his record is now sealed."

"That is correct. He suffered a troubled and abusive childhood at the hands of his step-father, Booth," she says, her voice getting quieter. She's speaking toward the chenille blanket now, recalling her conversation with the southern eighteen year old now assigned to her lab. "He said he realized while reading my case study that there was no way he could get away with murdering his step-father as long as there were people like us at the Jeffersonian solving homicide cases," she says, looking up at Booth to find his eyes glued to her face.

"Wow, Bones," he says, chuffing, then shaking his head. "That right there should make you feel … proud, like it's all worth it. You probably saved that kids life."

"I feel humbled, Booth," she says quietly, grimacing. He reaches over to take her hand and gives it a squeeze. She nods at him, holding his gaze with her own for a moment.

Booth nods, then squeezes her, kissing her on the temple. She chuckles, sheepishly.

"So, what is the entertainment of choice and why am I hooked up to this thing?" She lifts the sheets for a moment, peering down at the fetal heart beat girdle strapped around her and across her ever-widening belly. She looks up at Booth expectantly.

With one remote control, Booth points toward the entertainment center and clicks on the television screen, then queues the dvd player. Setting the first remote on the bed, he picks up the other and hits the play button. Over the speaker system, which is connected to Brennan's fetal heart monitor, they hear the swish-swish, swish-swish, swish-swish of their daughter's heartbeat. Then, as if prompted by the heart-song, the television screen lights up with the gray and white mottled moving image of their yet-to-be born daughter.

"Ohhhhh," sighs Brennan, almost unable to pull her eyes from the screen. She closes her eyes and listens to the heartbeat, placing both of her hands on her abdomen. Taking Booth's right hand, she moves it to a location where she's recently felt activity. Pressing his hand firmly into her side toward the front of her belly, she watches his face as he shakes his head in awe and wonder. On the screen, her unborn child with the prominent, Booth-shaped mental protuberance sucks her thumb and kicks her legs. Brennan sniffs as a tear slides down her cheek and drops onto her lap.

"Hormones taking over again?" Booth asks her when he notices the teardrop as it falls, followed by another one.

"No," she says, turning to look at him. "These are the happy, appreciative tears of my non compos mentis love for the father of my child … and, for that child herself, whom we made together," she says as if in a dream state. "You once told me … that babies are conceived from the overflowing love between the parents," she says, shrugging with one shoulder and raising an eyebrow as she looks up into his face. "Despite the fact that conception is a well-documented biological event, rather than a phenomenon created through the manifestation of hormonally-induced affinity, I find that I enjoy believing that your explanation is equally possible," she says, smiling sheepishly.

"Ha," grunts Booth, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. His expression as she says this is one of wonder and awe. He's about ready to shed a couple tears himself. He leans down toward her, kissing her twice energetically. "This is going to be the luckiest kid in the universe, Bones. You know that? You are going to make an awesome mom!"

"Oh, that's sweet," she says, smiling back at him, squeezing his thigh, then turning back to watch their daughter's movements on the screen. "Oh - did I tell you what my financial advisor said today?"

"Uh, no. How'd that go?" He asks, encouragingly, noticing that she is making an effort to include him. They've been working on this for a while now. Having been exclusively on her own for the last twenty years, including another person in private matters still doesn't come naturally for her. It's okay, though. They've found that some things don't come naturally to him either, like checking with her before he accepts an invitation for the two of them. Even though they've been together for over five months, they are both still getting used to being a couple. Their work and talk about their pregnancy seem to consume the majority of their time.

"It went great, although it was a very short meeting," she says, shrugging.

"Why's that?" Booth puckers his lips and furrows his brow in anticipation of some bad news.

"Well, my advisor strongly urged me to reschedule for a time when we could meet with him together," she says, sheepishly.

"Heh. Really?" Both chuckles, surprised.

"Yes," she nods. "He says the leading cause of 'marital discord,' or 'relationship discord,' in our case," she says, making air quotes to emphasize the types of discord. "The leading cause of discord among couples centers around financial issues." Brennan bites her lips together, waiting to see Booth's response.

Booth nods. "Smart man," he says, turning his head to the side, nodding. "I have heard that before. This guy is top notch, Bones. How do you feel about what he said?"

"He assured me that his comments are not reflective of a belief that only the man should make all the financial decisions in a family … quite the opposite. He said a disproportionate number of wives run the finances of the couples he advises," she says, matter-of-factly.

"Really?" says Booth, in an 'I told you so' tone of voice. "Hm," he grunts, scratching his chin in contemplation.

"Yes, it is true," she says, nodding, a serious expression on her face. "Anthropologically speaking, it makes perfect sense that the partner managing the household should also manage the finances that support that household," she says.

Booth smile-grimaces at her, amused that it took an outsider to provide an acceptable explanation for her.

"Homicidally speaking," Booth begins with a haughty tone, "money is one of the two leading motivations for murder ..."

"So, in essence, our meeting _together_ with the financial advisor to an extent provides us with insurance against us murdering each other," she says, as if making a scientific deduction. "Which reminds me, we should talk to someone about life insurance."

"Wow," says Booth in mock surprise. "Should it worry me that you just mentioned killing me and getting life insurance in the same sentence?" He asks, mock concern all over his face.

"Oh hoh, you are correct," she says, eyes wide in appreciation for this connection he's noticed. "I hadn't thought of that, but you are correct. Don't worry though. If I murdered you, I would most definitely receive the full benefit of any insurance policy we have on your life. They'd never be able to prove I killed you," she says, confidently.

"Really? You'd be that good at hiding the evidence?"

"Oh hoh. There'd be no evidence, Booth, I can assure you," she says, laughing and turning back toward the screen. "Remember, I have the perfect murder planned."

"Oh, that's right. Are you ever going to tell me what that is?"

"You'll have to read it in my next Kathy Reich novel, 'Dismemberment, She Wrote.

"I'll keep that in mind," he says, laughing, then leaning over to smooch her on the jaw before settling in to watch and listen to his daughter for a couple of more minutes.

"Booth," says Brennan sweetly, "this is wonderful, but can we switch sides? I really need to be on my own side of the bed to be completely comfortable ..."

"Anything for the mother of my daughter," he says, putting both arms around her, pulling her close, and planting a sweet kiss on her forehead before jumping out of bed and coming around to the side where she now sits, while she slides her increasing girth back over to the warm spot he so recently vacated.

* * *

><p><em>What do you think? Should I continue doing these every week? Would you read them?<br>Let me know, readers! thanks in advance. ~ Moxiegirl44 on Twitter _


	3. Prince Charmington Versus GI Joe

_A/N Greetings once again! I was astounded with the wonderful 4th episode and can't wait to write about that in the chapter after this one. First, however, I give you **Prince Charmington Versus G.I. Joe.** Thank you to all of you who have taken a moment to pen a review for the first two chapters - I try to respond to every single one personally - you know you make a difference to me! Enjoy! __~MoxieGirl _~MoxieGirl44 on Twitter__

* * *

><p><strong>Prince Charmington Versus G.I. Joe<br>**_Season 7, Episode 3  
><em>_Set to take place after the Prince in the Plastic Episode  
><em>

Walking up to the bar behind Booth, Brennan places an affectionate hand on his right shoulder. "He-he-hey!" Booth turns toward her touch and slides off his stool to greet the love of his life with a warm hug, a tender kiss on the lips, and a twinkling grin. He pulls out the stool to his right and offers his hand. She grabs it and hefts herself up onto the stool, relieved to finally be off her feet.

"Angela says I made Prince Charmington sound like Julia Child on Quaaludes, Booth. You know, Methaqualone, it's a sedative-hypnotic drug," she says, dejected.

"I know what Quaaludes are, Bones. What's your poison, beautiful pregnant lady?" Booth raises a finger and motions to Bruno, their regular bartender.

Brennan nods toward Bruno and says, "I'll have a Johnny Walker, tall, on the rocks, with a splash of water. Heavy-handed on the water, hold the Johnny Walker."

"Without the JW, it's just water, Bones," Booth says, chuckling. "Why didn't you just say water?" He looks at her with an amused smile. Booth has had a crappy day, but seeing Bones, heavy with his child, lightens his mood considerably. Just plain seeing her has always had this affect on him. He's fairly certain it always will, if the first six and a half years of their relationship is any indication.

Brennan shrugs. Her expression says, _'I have no logical excuse for not simply ordering water.'_ She tilts her head, giving him one of her Bones-y half-grins. Shrugging one shoulder, she says, "I know it's ridiculous. Must be the hormones. I wonder if they have any NutRageous® candy bars behind the counter," she puts her hands on the counter top and tries to peek over the edge, "or maybe some … hm … what do I want?" She scrunches her face into an expression of intense introspection, then her eyes fly open in revelation. "Pie? Yes, pie!"

Booth leans close enough to Brennan so they are nose to nose and only the two of them can hear. "Wait a minute, Bones," he says, chuckling again. "Are we talking _pie_ pie, _real_ pie, as in a _pastry_ of sorts, or," he says, leaning to the left so he can whisper right into her ear, "or are you talking _Booth_ pie?'" As long as he's there, he might as well plant a kiss behind her ear, so he does, closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of her hair. She wiggles and leans away because it tickles. A wave of what she's come to recognize as Oxytocin rolls across her chest from her throat southward. You'd think by now she'd be use to the effect his proximity has on her, but it just never gets old. She giggles, giving him the 'we're in public' version of the stink eye.

"Booth, don't be absurd," she retorts, raising a mischievous eyebrow. "Besides," she says, sliding her fingers over his thigh, giving his gracilis and adductor magnus muscles a little squeeze. She whispers in her throatiest voice, "Besides, I had Booth pie this morning. But this," she murmurs, "is a baser craving than even that."

"I will never get used to you doing that," he says, trying not to jump off the stool in response to the unexpected sensation of her warm fingers tickling his inner thigh. "And I swear will never get tired of it."

Of course, he's well aware of what she had this morning. Booth's inner child still can't get over the fact that he gets to wake up every morning to find this woman beside him. He's even further astounded that she's willing to get naked with him, and make love with him on a fairly regular basis.

"Booth, this is the kind of craving that can only be sated by putting something in my mouth –"

"That sounds more than a little suggestive, Bones," he says, taking a sip of his beer, "and doesn't clarify anything, by the way."

"What?" When comprehension dawns, she says, "Okay, let me restate that. I meant, by biting and chewing -" She looks to him for some sign of approval..

He laughs, shaking his head. Furrowing his brow, he shoots her an even more incredulous look. "Try again, Grasshopper!"

"Agh! How about … by putting something in my stomach?" They both look at her swollen abdomen, and crack up. "Oh, hell. Is nothing safe around you?"

He shrugs, pure amusement shining in his eyes.

"Crap! There's really nothing I can say that won't get me into trouble!" She pauses, and stares at Booth, smiling. "Though I have found you to be quite delicious, I need food, Booth. The digestible kind. The kind you can only have once, and then it's gone. You're enjoying this way too much. Get that ridiculous grin off your face!"

He's gone from a sly grin to a full-on toothy smile in under ten seconds as she was fumbling through her attempt at benign clarity.

Clearing his throat and stifling a chuckle, he attempts to exchange his amused expression for a more serious one. It doesn't work. Eventually, she throws a balled up napkin at him, which bounces off his face before dropping onto the floor behind the bar. They both crack up.

"They've never had pie … here … Bones," he laughs, giving in to a wonderful feeling of contentedness and belonging after such a long day interrogating idiots and filling out paperwork.

"What? I thought for sure they'd had something like pie here once. I know they did," she insists, furrowing her brow, unwilling to give up.

Booth raises an eyebrow as he takes a long sip from his Guinness. "Whatever gets you through the night, Bones," he says teasingly.

"You're what gets me through the night, Booth," she says unemotionally. Then she looks up and levels him with a salacious grin. Five months into their romantic relationship, and she still makes his heart skip a beat when she looks at him that way.

"Woah," he says chuckling, closing his eyes and dropping his chin to his chest. They are both now sitting with their arms crossed and resting on the bar in front of them, though she's leaning at a wider angle due to the baby bump that's in the way.

"You know," he says, licking his lips and pausing, "pregnant women are naturally beautiful." Opening his eyes, he glances toward her. "They have this … wholesome, natural, look about them. But I had no idea how sexy they could be." He leans into her sideways, pressing his shoulder into hers. Reaching over with his left hand, he turns her face toward him and kisses her on the lips, then the nose. They stare into each other's eyes for a moment before he returns his attention to the beer in front of him.

In response, Brennan coquettishly rests her chin on her own shoulder, opens her mouth to say something, but changes her mind. She decides to take the compliment and leave it at that. Instead, she exhales, smiling at the silhouette of the father of the miniature acrobat growing inside her.

"Thank you," she says to Bruno a moment later when he places a small, thin, white napkin and a large tumbler full of ice water in front of her, following it up with a discrete nod and a grin. She nods back, as usual. Bruno's been serving Booth, Bones, and their group for almost four years now. He's watched the transformation of these two people in particular, from colleagues, to friends, and finally, to lovers, during his tenure tending bar at The Founding Fathers. He also knows that despite having a bun in the oven, Dr. Brennan still likes to knock something back with her partner after a long day chasing bag guys – even if it is just water.

Brennan attempts to scoot her stool closer to the bar. "Didn't these stools used to fit much closer to the counter?" She's not speaking to anyone in particular, but she's irritated and tired from a very long day at work hunched over a set of incomplete remains. She just wants to relax. Unfortunately, bar stools are not engineered for comfort, or for a woman at the end of her second trimester.

Booth can see that it's not the stools that have changed. Rather, it's the circumference of his partner's midsection that keeps her at arm's length from her drink. He knows better than to point this out.

"Hey, these stools scoot better in this direction," he says, getting off of his own stool and dragging it the two inches closer to hers. They end up practically leaning on each other as if holding each other up, but no one's complaining. He can tell by her expression and the way she repeatedly straightens her back and leans side to side that she's uncomfortable. Maybe if she leans on him it will take some of the pressure off her spine.

He puts his arm around her and pulls her sideways, squeezing her right shoulder. She smirks at him. She knows what he's not saying; she can see it in his eyes. "It's more fun to lean on each other than the bar anyway, right?" He says this in an attempt to make her feel better.

Relenting, she leans in toward him, gives him an appreciative look, a sweet yet quick and a little bit self-conscious kiss on the lips, and a smile.

"All evidence supports that theory, Booth," she says, grinning.

"So, what were you saying about Angela and Julia Child?" He removes his arm from around her and rests it on the bar next to hers.

"She wanted to see if I could play with that small insentient plastic humanoid that was found with Debbie Cortez' remains." She sighs and shrugs, draining half of her glass and setting it on the bar.

"Ah, Prince Charmington," intones Booth, nodding.

"Yes," she answers, grimacing and pursing her lips.

"So, did you?"

"Did I play with the plastic prince? I did," she says, smirking and rolling her eyes. "Angela said my Prince Charmington voice sounds like Julia Child on Quaaludes," she says, smirking. "She also said every little girl she knew had one of those Charmington dolls. I certainly didn't. Did you have one?"

"Me? A Barbie™ doll? Oh, _hell_ no," he says, a little too forcefully, "No Booth with any sense of pride would be caught dead playing with a doll!"

"But there was a male doll for the more masculine preadolescent," she suggests, looking for recognition in his features.

"Ken™? Ken™ was NOT masculine," he says, chuffing and tapping on the top of the bar with his index finger for emphasis.

"Yes, I think we've discussed this," she says, smiling and straightening her back to relieve the discomfort from holding herself up on the stool. "Can we find a table, something a little closer to the ground, with a back rest, preferably?"

Booth helps her climb down off the stool. Placing his hand on the small of her back, he leads her toward a recently abandoned table being cleared of empty glasses and used napkins.

"Ken™ was supposed to be the perfect male," she continues, setting her glass on the square glossy oak tabletop. "Muscular build, broad chest, blonde hair, masculine bone structure. However, he was the antithesis of the perfect mate for Barbie™ as he had no genitalia," she says, matter-of-factly, turning to look at Booth. "To be fair, Barbie™ didn't have any either. Genitalia, I mean."

"Ohhh, yes," chagrins Booth, pulling out her chair and helping scoot it back up to the table with her in it. He looks over his shoulder to see if anyone is paying attention to this non-conventional barroom discussion. "I do recall this conversation. I thought I'd successfully blocked it from my memory." He sits, putting his elbows on the table, and squeezes his eyes closed, rubbing his forehead with his palm.

"If Barbie™ were an actual woman," he recalls Brennan informing him the _first_ time they talked about this, "she'd be 6 feet tall, weigh 100 lbs., and wear a size four dress. Her BMI would be so low she couldn't menstruate. She'd also have to walk around on all fours because she'd be so top heavy."

"How about we not go there?" He asks in a pleading tone, pulling himself back to the present conversation. He'd prefer leaving all discussion of … body parts … at the office, or at home, or anywhere other than here.

For a moment, he considers bringing up the point that Ken™'s lack of genitalia was a moot point if Barbie™ couldn't even menstruate. Before he can stop himself, he blurts something to that affect.

"Oh!" she exclaims. "Very astute observation, Booth! That is, if the purpose was for Ken™ and Barbie™ to build a family together!"

Before she can go any further, he continues. "Anyway, the 'doll' you're talking about was an 'a_ction figure'_ called G.I. Joe™," he says.

"Did you know that the term 'action figure' was literally created for G.I. Joe™, or, _America's Moveable Fighting Man,_ as he was originally called? In 1964, the toy company, Hasbro, I think it was, didn't think boys would play with dolls, but they would play with an _action figure_."

"Now the hell would you know that little tidbit?"

"I reviewed a ground-breaking dissertation by Thomas Malaby from University of Wisconsin entitled, _'Anthropology and Play: The Contours of Playful Experience'._ It presented an alternative portrayal of play as irreducibly contingent: play then becoming more of an attitude of readiness to improvise than simply non-work or representative of real life. It was actually quite fascinating. I'll see if I can find a copy of that dissertation, Booth. You might want to read it in preparation for our daughter's arrival." She says this in all sincerity, making a mental note.

"Why do I even ask anymore?" Booth asks, rhetorically, rolling his eyes.

"It might surprise you to learn that Hasbro threatened to terminate anyone involved in the development of G.I. Joe™ for using the word, 'doll'," she continues, ignoring his disinterest in the scientific dissertation. "Did you have a G.I. Joe™ action figure, Booth?"

Booth seems lost in thought for a moment. She tries to read his expression to no avail. _He's not saying anything. Maybe he's embarrassed at having had 'dolls', even if they were called action figures. So, 'graphic novels' are acceptable as a grown man, but action figures were taboo for the preadolescent male?_ She ponders this, squinting as she observes his body language. She looks as if she is examining a set of remains. _I'll never comprehend the blurred line between boyhood and manhood! she thinks with chagrin._

"I'm guessing by your expression that you _did_ have a G.I. Joe™. Is this one of those private things I shouldn't mention to anyone else, Booth?" She gets no response. She tries again. "So, did you have the whole Action Team?" No use. He's gone off to Planet Booth. There is nothing she can do except wait it out for a moment while he works through it.

He rolls the bottom of his beer bottle in a circular pattern on the tabletop. He puckers his lips before commenting. Alternately staring straight ahead, and looking down at his bottle, he begins as if there had been no gap in the conversation. "I had the brown-eyed G.I. Joe™ with a painted plastic head, a big red scar on his cheek, and the Kung-Fu Grip." He draws a line below his eye on his right cheek with his index finger. "Jared had_ 'Mike Power, Atomic Man'_. They were Christmas gifts. Our last Christmas …" His voice trails off. He locks eyes with Brennan, and shrugs.

She sees that he's not embarrassed at all. This is something different. Uh oh. She should have known. At the age most boys would have been interested in G.I. Joe™, Booth would have been dealing with domestic turbulence resulting from his father's alcoholism.

"Then," he says, raising his eyebrows and cocking his head to the side away from her, "when we moved in with Pops, he got me the blue-eyed one with the fuzzy hair and beard. He got another one, this one with red hair and no beard, for Jared. At Christmas the following year, Pops gave each of us our own _African American Adventurer_ with the eagle eye vision. He said they were twin bothers. Heh." He shrugs. She can tell by the way his whole body is vibrating, that his knee is bouncing up and down like a jackhammer under the table. He does this sometimes when he's telling her something he's never told anyone before, and isn't sure he really wants to be talking about it now. Usually, he's not even aware he's doing it.

Discretely reaching under the table, she rests her palm on his thigh, slowly and deliberately applying pressure from mid-thigh to his knee and back several times. It's not intended as a suggestive or provocative gesture, its purpose is to soothe him, to remind him that he's safe with her. This is just one of the little ways she takes care of him, and that's what makes it precious, even provocative, to him. From above the table, you'd never know this was going on underneath it. She's staring toward the bar, and he's still playing with his beer bottle, which is empty now.

He simultaneously stops vibrating, takes a deep breath, and reaches under the table to wrap his fingers around her hand. They share a smile that says a million things that no one else can hear.

"Let's get out of here," he says, tossing a twenty onto the table and pulling her chair back, helping her out of it.

* * *

><p>Both drives them home in companionable silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts.<p>

"It was obvious Pops was trying to compensate for it being our first Christmas away from home by giving us those action figures," explains Booth, picking up where they had left off.

"Christmas morning was the only time all year we had been able to count on Dad being sober. It was his favorite holiday. We'd wake up to a twinkling tree covered in strings of tinsel, candy canes, and little ornaments cut out of felt and covered in lumps of dried glue and multi-colored glitter. Each felt ornament had a school picture of either Jared or me glued to its center." Booth muses, chuffing distractedly.

"It must have been difficult for Pops to see his son missing out on your lives like that," says Brennan, grimacing empathetically, looking up at Booth as they sit on opposite ends of the couch. She's got her feet propped up on his lap as he massages her swollen arches. "Ughhhh, yeah. Right there," she says closing her eyes, sucking in her breath through clenched teeth. "I underestimated the impact the additional weight would have on my plantar faciae, not to mention my poor calcanei and metatarsals!"

Booth stops for a moment, resting his palms on the silky skin of the tops of her feet.

He shakes his head. "As a kid, I think I was so wrapped up in my own kid version of what was going on around me … how things affected _me_, you know? I never thought about how my dad's drinking affected other people. I mean, I thought about Jared, and Mom, of course. But I never thought what it must have done to Pops. Why is that?"

"You were a child, Booth. Your perspective was limited. And it wasn't your job to worry about anyone other than yourself, and maybe your brother. Most children are acutely attuned to their mothers as well," she says, opening her eyes and smiling wanly at him. "Remember when we found my mother's remains?"

"How could I forget?" He looks at her, returning to his job of massaging the bottoms of her feet.

"Gently, please." She says, wincing at the return to deep tissue massage. "Ahhhhh. Muuuuch better!" She sighs. "It never occurred to me before we found Mom that my parents must have had siblings and parents of their own who had no idea what had happened to them. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine your adult child disappearing without a trace? Who knows how many different identities they'd gone through by the time they had Russ and me. What were their names when they got married? Who was at their wedding? Were they even really married? Who missed them when they disappeared the first time, whenever that was?" Exasperated, she blows out a lungful of air.

Booth raises one of her feet and reaches further up to gently massage her calves. "Have you talked to Max about any of this?"

"I think I've died and gone to heaven," she says, sinking further down into the couch, making it easier to rest her calves across his lap. She's avoiding answering his question, buying time to think privately for a moment. "You can stop doing that in about fifteen minutes," she says, chuckling.

"When is it my turn? Don't you pass out on me, lady!"

"It's your turn when you gain 25 pounds in preparation for pushing an eight pound humanoid and a three pound placenta out of an orifice not much greater than the circumference of your external auditory canal," she says, teasing him. He shakes his head, giving her the stink eye. She shrugs back at him.

"You know," she says, "I really haven't asked Max about any of this," she says sheepishly, tilting her head to the side and shrugging. "I think part of me wants to preserve what normal, happy memories I _do_ have. My good memories. I don't want them to be unraveled by the backstory. I don't see how anything good could come of it," she says.

"It's not like you not to want to know the truth, Bones," comments Booth, a look of careful concern on his face.

She focuses on his face silently, exhaling slowly. Pursing her lips, she whispers in a choked voice, "Even scientists have fantasies they protect."

He stops kneading the souls of her feet and reaches toward her, laying his hand on her knee.

Her eyes gloss over, her brow and lips are pinched. He notices her jaw muscles tighten. When she finally speaks, she's obviously can't speak without choked-up. "If anything I hold as good in my memory is a lie, I- I just don't even want to know it. I need those good memories, Booth. They are all I have … from my youth." She inhales deeply, then exhales forcefully, as if doing so will blow away the ash left behind by all the unanswered questions. "Tell me more about your Christmases at home when you were very young," she says. She leans her head back and closes her eyes again, pinching the dampness from the corners of her eyes.

Booth nods silently.

"Okay," he begins. "There would be a pile of wrapped gifts with each of our names on it. Dad would sit in his chair in his bathrobe and always ask the same question in his gravely voice. Booth adopts a stern expression and tries to sound authoritative. "Well, boys, will it be lumps of coal again this year, or did you finally get it right?"

Booth smiles at the memory for a moment before the smile slides off his face. "By two in the afternoon, he'd be passed out, toasted, on the couch. Pops would be helping us assemble the new airplane kit, or lay train tracks, or whatever the big gift of the year was. Later, he'd take me and Jared out to the pond to skate if it was frozen enough." Booth pauses, biting on the inside of his lower lip. He shrugs, chuckling uncomfortably, as if to make light of this less than picture perfect Christmas Card holiday.

"Booth, do you know what is wonderful about all of this?"

"What could possibly be wonderful about either one of our Christmas memories?"

"What is wonderful, redemptive, Booth, is that we have the opportunity to make our _own_ Christmas experience, our _own_ Christmas memories. You, and me, our child, and Parker."

Booth rests his head on the back of the couch. After a moment, he nods. "We could have a tree, over there in that corner, maybe," he says, gesturing behind them toward the living room windows.

"If we haven't found our own joint domicile by then," she reminds him, "With an acre of land for me, and a 'man sanctuary' for when you feel the need to protect the last bastion of your masculinity."

He turns his head to gaze at her. "Right. And if we have a fire place –"

"Oh, we've got to have at least one fire place," she says, interrupting him.

"Right. We could have stockings, and eggnog, and a wreath on the front door."

"And when she's sufficiently ambulatory and her fine motor skills are nearly perfected, she and Parker can help you string lights in the trees of our front yard."

"Now that would make some wonderful memories," says Booth, smiling over at the love of his life. He's especially grateful because he's well aware of her opinions about Christmas and what is meant to signify. Little by little, she has been making concessions to provide room for both of their sets of beliefs. He appreciates that more than she knows.

She nods, returning a soft happy smile. Sitting up, she scoots toward him and nestles herself under his arm, laying her head on his shoulder.

"Booth and Bones' memories," he muses.

"Bones and Booth's memories," she says against his lips,when she turns around to kisses him.

* * *

><p><em>There you have it, Dear Readers! I hope you enjoyed it. ; )<em>  
><em>My fellow writers tell me I should engage in a little begging if I want more reviews. <em>  
><em>Does that really work? It seems to for them. So here goes: <em>  
><em>Please, please, please, let me know how you felt about this chapter!<br>Until next time, stay safe and warm ..._

_Besos, MoxieGirl44 on Twitter _


	4. Misty Watercolored Memories

_A/N This chapter is a sweet and fluffy companion piece to S7, E4, The Male in the Mail, during which Booth agonizingly and emotionally grapples with the knowledge that his father has passed away. Who will ever forget how this was powerfully portrayed by David Boreanaz? I know I am not likely to. ___Who hasn't been hurt by someone they've loved? Who hasn't lost someone without having said what needed to be said? Who hasn't loved someone they wish they didn't? _I think it's in their moments of grief and self-revelation that we most love and identify with our favorite characters. The shared experience anchors us to them._

The actors may not be aware of it, but their portrayals of humanity help us invest in our own. They show us how to make decisions, and to take action before it's too late, or to forgive ourselves if it already is. That is the greatest gift they give us, I believe, whether they are aware of it or not. I hope they are aware of it, at least in some small part, because as humans we want more from life than a paycheck. We want to know that we make a difference. As spectators of the lives of celebrities, we do a lot of taking. If you are ever blessed with the opportunity to come face to face with someone whose portrayal of a character made a difference in your life, I hope you thank them, gracefully, humbly, and tactfully, letting them see that they do make a difference.

_If you haven't already read "I Decide," you may find it interesting. It paints a picture of how it may have come to be that Booth and Jared were brought up by their grandfather. You can access it from my profile page._

_Thank you to JunkieCat who helped me with some of the details for this chapter, and to Diko, my tireless editor, who helped me turn a mess into two fairly decent chapters! BESOS! Also, DianeWesley or KathleenDey requested the word "quasi" be in this chapter - see if you can find it!_

_Thank you, ever so sweetly, for all the generous reviews of the previous chapters. Please know that if you haven't heard from me, eventually you will, and I DO read everything! ~ MoxieGirl44_

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 4 Misty Watercolored Memories<br>**_Season 7, Episode 4 The Male in the Mail  
><em>

_"Nothing trumps family, Bones. Remember that."  
><em>_~ SB, Season 5, Episode 8_

For the fifth night in a row, Brennan is awakened by a cerebral cortex that's been aroused by the histamine neurotransmitters released by her tuberomammillary nucleus. As a result, at 3:30 in the morning, Brennan is wide awake and ravenous. Another lovely side affect of pregnancy. Fixing herself two packets of instant oatmeal, she sits in a darkened living room to eat and think.

If she hadn't been awakened by all the brainstem and hypothalamus activity, she would have been up anyway, dealing with the acid reflux, the semi-hourly trips to the toilet, and the aching hips.

According to the _South African Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology_, laying on her left side is supposed to improve blood flow to the placenta and help her kidneys eliminate waste and excess fluids. Once she's finished eating, she usually situates herself on the couch, lying on her left side with a pillow between her knees to alleviate the ache in her hips. These suggestions by the experts are all well and good, but they don't really make her any more comfortable or help her fall asleep.

Biology and chemistry are what awaken Brennan. Brennan is what awakens Booth, though Brennan is usually unaware of it. When he feels a significant shift in the mattress followed by the absence of her warmth, many times he gets up to go to the bathroom then crawls back in bed. _No sense in both of us losing sleep, right?_ His mammalian brain assures him.

As many times as not though, instead of heading back to bed, Booth stands in the bedroom doorway just out of Brennan's line of sight, arms folded across his chest. He watches her go through her routine. She always eats in the dark. When she's finished, she sets her bowl aside and stretches, arms and feet reaching out as far as possible, fingers and toes spreading wide and wiggling back and forth. She never reads, never watches television, never listens to music. Eventually, she sits in quiet meditative contemplation.

Standing just under cover of shadow, Booth watches the love of his life and wonders what she must be thinking. Usually her eyes are open, absently fixed on some object in front of her as she drifts off into her thoughts. He's found her drifting off into those thoughts a lot lately. She gets very quiet, very still, all of her focus directed inward. In the past, when he's witnessed such intense focus in her it's been on something external, a set of remains or facts. But this is different.

The first time he came across her gazing off into space at the office, he asked her about it.

"_What are you doing?" _

"_Just thinking," she'd said, not even ruffled by his intrusion, her inwardly-concentrated focus unchanging. Then, she smiled at him, a sparkly, serene smile. _

"_About the case?" He'd inquired._

"_No," she's said, nodding slightly, reaching out to rest her hand on a stack of files on her desk. _

"_Then, about what?"_

_She'd shrugged, leaning her head to the side, smiled. "I'm building a small hominid inside my womb. One which appears to have inherited your mental tuberosity and zygomatic arches, and hopefully my parietal, occipital and temporal lobes. Isn't that enough to be doing right now?"_

_He'd chuckled. __She chuckled as well, her eyes emitting serenity and pleasure at finding him standing before her.__ Is this what they mean when they say a pregnant woman is nesting? He'd wondered, amazed at how such an amazing person, despite her brilliance and her articulate description of her condition, is actually doing what millions of __ordinary women around the world__ have been doing for centuries. Since that first time he posed the question__, 'what are you doing?' upon finding her like this__, he's learned to leave her alone, or approach gently, watching for a sign of invitation._

In the middle of the night, Booth sometimes approaches slowly and says her name, quietly, so as not to startle her. She always greets him with a welcoming smile, holding her hand out toward him. Sometimes Booth rubs her feet, gets her a glass of water, or helps her pull herself out of her chair, or off the couch, so they can crawl back into bed together. Sometimes they talk. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they sit next to each other on the couch, leaning against each other, his fingers gently rubbing circles on the skin of her arm or shoulder. Sometimes he rubs her belly, or she rubs it. Lately, they've been holding their hands still, waiting to feel the kick of a tiny foot, the poke of a tiny elbow.

Tonight, he wants to join her. Tonight, he wants to talk. He has a lot on his mind. His father recently died. She is the only one who knows the full story about his relationship with his father, Edwin Booth. Not realizing until the last minute that he can't see her anymore, he calls out to her.

"Bones," he whispers into what appears to be a monochromatic room in the dim light of the middle of the night. "Where are you?"

"I'm down here, Booth," she says quietly. "Did I wake you?"

_Has she fallen again? Shit!_ His heart skips a beat as he carefully rushes toward her voice, not seeing her pale face floating above any of the chairs or the sofa where he would expect to find it. Finally, he sees her. She's on her knees, crouched on the floor in front of the couch, surrounded by pillows. She's not at all distressed. This is a good sign.

* * *

><p>Brennan doesn't mind having this time alone in the dark hours of the morning. This time provides her with the mental space to unpack her boxed-up thoughts, one by one, and examine them without interruption. If Booth joins her, that's all right too.<p>

She's finding that her impending motherhood has brought with it recurring thoughts of her own mother, Christine Brennan.

_What would Mom tell me about pregnancy? _She wonders, forlornly. It's hard not to wonder when she gets asked the same round of questions by a rotating doc at the obstetricians' office every time she goes for her maternity check-up..

"Did your mother have any complications during either of her pregnancies or births?" This is always the first question. Irritable, uncomfortable, and disgusted with what seems to her to be a pointless interview, she's finally taken to conducting the interview herself.

~~~ "Did my mother deliver vaginally or by Cesarean Section? I believe vaginally," she asks and answers. "I have no reason to believe otherwise. _Don't you people write these answers down? I answer this same set of monotonous questions every time I come here!"_

She's met with a blank stare from the OBGYN on rotation that day.

Rolling her eyes, Brennan continues, sitting up as straight as she can to extend her increasingly stressed and aching vertebral column.

~~~ "How old was my mother when she first/last gave birth? I have no idea." At one time she thought she knew the answer to this question, but she's come to realize there is very little information she can trust about any of the facts of her mother's life. Who knows how old she really was?

~~~ "Is there any history of preeclampsia, placenta previa, gestational diabetes or Bell's Palsy in the family? No idea!" Brennan pauses extending her fingers as if ticking off the items on a list.

~~~ "Any uterine, breast or cervical cancer in the family? Not that I am aware of, but there is no reason I would be." She pauses, stares at the OBGYN.

~~~ "Any multiple birth pregnancies? Again, not that I'm aware … listen, I have no idea." Smirk.

~~~ "How much weight did my mother gain with each of her pregnancies? No idea, or, I know ... enough!" Shrug. Grimace.

~~~ "Was either of us kids premature?" She chuffs, blowing out two puffy cheeks of air. "No idea."

~~~ "Did all Mom's pregnancies terminate in live births?" She shrugs. If there had been miscarriages before Brennan was born, how would she have known? As she continues, she begins to feel defeated, an orphan all over again, unable to provide any information that could prove to be beneficial to the outcome of the approaching, and most impactful, physical event of her life: her first pregnancy and birth.

_Wow, I thought I was finally at a stage in life where I wouldn't feel I needed my mother anymore. I was wrong,_ she thinks, mentally grimacing, wishing she could call Booth. She's becoming more and more dependent upon him. Surprisingly, she is more comforted than disturbed by this. Fiercely independent by nature, Brennan is learning that some of her needs she simply cannot meet on her own. Besides, Booth is well equipped and more than happy to assist her with just about any situation or concern she might face, be physical, emotional, or sexual. Despite the challenges they have been facing in the awkward dance of creating something new between them, she's finding that she enjoys the symbiotic nature of their current arrangement.

"I was breastfed!" She forcefully informs the OBGYN. "So was my brother," she adds almost defiantly. "I know virtually nothing else about my mother's gynecological history. Nothing at all." It's a 'screw you' to all in the medical profession who insist she go down this path at every visit.

What she does know, and is thinking about tonight as she lies on her side on the couch, breathing through a Braxton Hicks contraction, is what it was like to have a mother who loved her. Tonight, she's thinking about her childhood before her parents left. She smiles, remembering the few things Christine did share with her daughter about her experience of motherhood. She recalls a game they used to play at bedtime every night from the time she was five years old.

* * *

><p>"<em>I love you, Mom," Brennan would say, kissing her mom on the cheek on the way to bed.<em>

"_I love you, too, Sweetie," Mom would reply, hugging her back._

"_I love you three." _

"_I love you four." _

"_I love you more," was Brennan's final reply. But Mom had one more._

"_I will always love you way, way, way more, Temperance."_

"_Why can't a child love a mother as much as the mother loves the child?" She finally asked her mother one night when she was thirteen years old and had endured this unexplained response one too many times. _

"_A mother loves her child more than the child will ever love her mother. You'll understand that one day," her mother said. "Because a mother knows everything about her child."_

"_But … we are physiologically the same, you and I, Mom. You do not possess chemical processes or neurotransmitters that provide you with a greater or lesser capacity to love than I do."_

"_Tempe, I did not say you __cannot or will __never__ love anyone as mush as I love you, just that you will never love __me__ as much as I love you."_

_Brennan stared at her mother, thinking this must be a riddle. Noticing the wheels turning in her precocious daughter's head, Christine had continued._

"_Believe me, Tempe, you will understand this when you are a mother. A mother's love is born out of how intimately she knows her child. A mother is the keeper of her child's story, everything that her child is and ever will be. She understands why her child is the way she is. She knows the pain in that child's life, and she feels responsible for it. A mother sees the beauty of the world in her child. She fumes at her child's disobedience, yet marvels at the ingenuity for that same disobedience she is punishing her for."_

"_When a child loses her way, or forgets who she is, her mother is the one who brings her back, reminds her what she's made of. A mother puts her child first. You should not put me first, Tempe. That is not your place. It is my job to sacrifice for you, not the other way around. It takes a lot of love to make a mother's sacrifices."_

"_Maybe it's not the same for all mothers, or all children. But it is for me."_

* * *

><p>In Brennan's experience, Christine Brennan had a fairly idealistic outlook on motherhood. Throughout Brennan's time in the foster care system, and more recently, in her work at the Jeffersonian, she has seen enough of humanity to know that the kind of maternal love Christine Brennan believed in may be wonderful, but it certainly, and unfortunately, isn't universal.<p>

As a forensic anthropologist, Brennan has come face to face with plenty of mother-child relationships that have suffered from self-centeredness, envy, spite, and some that even ended in murder. As a matter of fact, when a child mysteriously disappears, the parents are almost always the first suspects, and, as horrific as it may be, are many times found responsible. Parents, Brennan has concluded, are people just like everyone else. They come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees of neurosis. Yes, many have that semi-unconditional love for their children, but a lot don't. It is foolish to believe that procreation turns a person into a benevolent creature worthy of canonization.

_That's why so many people believe in psychiatry,_ muses Brennan with a smirk.

* * *

><p><em>If mom loved me as much as she said, <em>Brennan thinks tonight_, it must have been out of that love that she left us behind._ She first came to this realization a couple of years ago, but it's one she feels the need to reaffirm every once in a while to remind herself that how things ended up for Brennan is much better than it would have been if her parents had not left to spare their children's lives.

This particular night, though, as she peruses her memories of her mother, Brennan is also consumed with thoughts of Booth and his relationship with his father. She wonders if the father-son relationship is as powerful as the mother-daughter relationship. Both she and Booth were devastatingly abandoned by their same-sex parent at a very tender age. Booth when he was eleven; Brennan when she was fifteen.

_You never get over that,_ she thinks. _But you can find love out there in the world. Booth has shown me that._ A wave of gratefulness washes over Brennan at this thought, followed be a couple of tears. _Eh, Probably the hormones,_ she tells herself, though she's beginning to allow herself to accept that tears like this are not always the result of an overactive pituitary gland. Regardless, she chuckles at herself as she wipes the tears away.

Unable to get comfortable lying on her side on the couch any longer, Brennan carefully slides off the couch and onto the floor to kneel on a pillow in front of the couch. Shoving another pillow between her calves and her thighs, Brennan rests her forehead and forearms on the couch seat, settling back on her haunches.

"Ahhhhhhh," she sighs. This does take some pressure off her spine, and a considerable amount of pressure off her hips. As she sits there, she remembers the story Booth told her about the last day he saw his flesh and blood father. She hopes that Booth can see that he, Booth, is nothing like his father, and that he has much more of his grandfather, 'Pops', in him than anyone else. Pops is the man who taught Booth everything he knows about love, loyalty, relationship, respect. Pops is the one who adored Booth. She remembers what Pops told her the first time they spent a couple of days in each other's company.

"_I love that kid, I'm more proud of him than anybody in the world," Pops had said with a twinkle in his eye as he took a sip from his glass of water. Booth had left the two of them alone while he returned to the Hoover building to interview a suspect._

Brennan also remembers the rest of Pops' revelation that day. She'd already known that Booth's father was an emotionally and physically abusive alcoholic who abandoned Booth and his brother in 1982. Booth and Jared had been cared for by Pops from then on. But that wasn't the full story.

"_I never had the nerve to tell him that it was my fault," Pops had said in an emotional and shaky voice. "Maybe if I was a better man, I coulda figured something else out but when I saw my son hitting Seeley, beating that little kid, that was it. I said "Get out you don't deserve to be a father. Get out!" He never came back so I was left with the two boys. I didn't know what else to do. He was beating my grandson. Look when the time is right, you'll tell him, and if he needs it, you'll hold him, okay?_

Ever since his father left, Booth has harbored a resentment toward Edwin Booth that has made it difficult for him to reveal himself fully to those he's close to. There are still many things about Booth's past that Brennan doesn't know. She has confidence that, when the time is right, Booth will confide in her. What he wants to keep to himself is just fine with her, unless it gets in the way of their life together. Then, as he has always done for her, Brennan will help him to see that it's time to talk about it. Over the last couple of days, Booth's reluctance to deal with or discuss his feelings about Ed Booth's death had been causing considerable strain between the two of them. This is exactly why she had been insistent that he open the box left behind as part of Ed's belongings.

Tonight, as she's reflecting on these things about the man she loves, she is gently shaken from her reverie by a soft disembodied voice calling her name. It's a voice she recognizes. A voice that brings her peace. A voice that she loves.

"Bones," whispers Booth, revealing himself, walking out of the shadowed doorway to their bedroom. "Where are you?"

"I'm down here, Booth. Did I wake you? That microwave ding is so loud when there's nothing else going on," she says, smiling warmly up at him, even though he can barely see it in the semi-darkness.

"No, you didn't wake me, I had to go to the bathroom anyway," he whispers. "How can you be comfortable down there?" Booth tentatively sits on the couch next to where she's resting her arms.

"It is surprisingly helpful in relieving the compaction of my vertebrae. It's also relieving the chronic discomfort where my femora articulate with the acetabulum of my innominate. But, you know what? Everything's starting to hurt again. Can you help me up?"

"Sure," he says, standing and unsuccessfully attempting to lift her from behind. Rounding the couch, he reaches for her hands. She grabs hold and he pulls her up. "Look at that! Doesn't take a scientist to figure out how to get a pregnant lady off the floor!" He says.

"You may have had a future in physics, Booth. You're a natural at applying force, and using your body as a simple tool to leverage -–"

"Whatever, Bones," he interrupts in a quasi-sarcastic tone, chuckling. "Wait, did you just call me a tool?" He scrutinized, one eyebrow shooting up to his hairline.

She shrugs. "If the boot, uh, buckles, Booth." She's met by a blank stare. She gives him some wide eyes that convey, 'don't you get it?'

"How about, 'if the SHOE FITS'?" He chuckles and shakes his head in one of those, 'you're a hopeless case', gestures. "Anyway, what do you want to try now. To get comfortable, I mean?" They face each other across the couch. Brennan shakes her head and sighs heavily.

"I don't know if there's anyway I can be comfortable for more than five minutes," she chagrins. "But you know what I'd really like?"

Booth leans his head to the side and regards her warily. "What might that be? You know how I feel about having sex this late in the pregnancy. I'm not comfortable with the fact that our daughter would be able to hear us. Not when we'd be doing … that!"

Ever since Brennan told him about the fetus' auditory development beginning in the 27th week, Booth has gotten weird about exposing their daughter to things he deems as inappropriate for a baby to hear. One time he actually insisted Brennan step out of an interview with a suspect who continually sputtered expletives at Brennan, accusing her of tampering with the evidence to implicate him in his sister's murder.

"Booth, that is not what I was thinking, but must I remind you that though she can hear, fairly well by this point actually, she won't understand what she's hearing. It will be four months post-utero before her frontal lobe is developed enough for her to even recognize her name, which is the word she will hear with the greatest frequency. She won't understand simple commands until she's at least eight months old. So I very much doubt she will be able to make sense of the vibrations transmitted to her left cerebral hemisphere by our –"

"But I'm telling you, Bones," he interrupts, not interested in a biology lesson, "what if she remembers, huh? What if she remembers what she hears us doing, or saying, and later she's mortified or damaged by it some how?"

"Her hippocampus," says Brennan, shaking her head and waving her hand in the air to emphasize her point. "Her hippocampus is too focused on the tone and emotion in our voices to even begin to organize the vibrations into meaningful speech, which she cannot comprehend, nor will she remember! That is a well-documented fact of brain development."

Booth comes around the couch and stands in front of her, hands on hips. It feels like a stalemate. It's not that he doesn't want to make love; he doesn't want to do any damage to the baby. He and Rebecca were no longer on intimate terms by her third trimester, so this particular conundrum is completely new to him.

"Booth," says Brennan, sighing wearily and only slightly irritated that this is the fourth time they've had this conversation. "How could a child possibly be damaged by the sounds of her parents engaging in the same act that created her, or as you like to put it, sharing their physical love in the way God intended?"

"But we can get loud, Bones! And who knows what we might say, or yell, or whatever? Or what embarrassing sounds we might make?" Booth is slightly panicked. He's lost a fair number of arguments with this woman, but he believes the safety and well being of his unborn child is at stake here. In view of that, he's highly motivated to win this argument.

"We don't say embarrassing things during sex," she objects, leaning back as if she's just smelled something awful. She sits down on the couch because standing in one place for too long is hard on her feet. This is a new twist in his argument, the concern about the baby knowing what's going on, comprehending their exchange of verbal affection. "Besides, you say very sweet things to me during sex."

"I do? Seriously?" His expression is one of surprise and suspicion.

"Yes, you do Booth," she says, regarding him askance. "You look surprised."

"Uh, I'm surprised you remember that stuff." For the life of him he can't remember a single thing he's said to her while making love_. When all the blood in your body has exited your brain, who knows what might come out of your mouth in a moment of passion? _He's thinking. That's his story and he's sticking to it.

"Of course, I do," she says, "And it's not just stuff, it's very sweet! You have no idea what you say, do you?" She raises her eyebrow, amused at his reaction.

"Bones, a man can't multitask the way a woman can," he says, hiding behind this highly overrated misconception as so many do when they have no other excuse.

"Would you like me to tell you what you usually say?" She dips her chin down and looks at him sideways, through her lashes, wiggling her eyebrows at him, a sly smirk on her lips.

"Uh," he grunts, swallowing, and noticing he's starting to feel quite warm around his ears and down his neck. He … would like to know … and she is the only one who can tell him. _Hm. How embarrassing can it be, right?_ He thinks.

Brennan sits, waiting patiently. Her patience can be endless when she wants it to be. Sometimes this annoys him. Especially when he'd like to move on, avoid the direction a conversation is going. With Bones, there are any number of uncomfortable paths any conversation might take.

_Oh, what the hell,_ he decides, sitting on the couch. "Alright, it's obvious you wanna tell me," he says. "And these are sweet things, right?" He's still a little wary.

"I find that I enjoy them. Therefore, I consider them to be sweet, yes," she says, shrugging.

"Okay. Hit me with 'em," he says, crossing his arms, covering his mouth to hide any reaction his lips might reveal. He braces himself.

"You're sure about this?" She knows he can be squeamish about sexual revelations.

Booth closes his eyes briefly and nods. She can tell he's grimacing underneath his hand. He stares past her. Ready. He imagines this must be what it's like to hear the truth from an ex-lover about whether or not you were any good in bed.

"Okay," she says in a tone that warns him this could be … interesting. She giggles and shakes her head. She begins in a voice filled with the same degree of emotion it would have if she were reading the nutritional information on the side of a box of Raisin Bran®. "You say things like, 'Oh, I love your thighs, you have such great thighs." She pauses, watching his reaction.

Then, her voice softens and she smiles. Using more inflection this time, her voice more reflective of the meaning of her words, she says, _"Oh, these breasts! I love your breasts. Hello breasts, I'll be your host for the evening'."_ She giggles, and takes his hand away from his mouth, revealing his amused smile. "You also say things like_, 'Your skin is so soft'_ or _'My, God, you are beautiful'_, and, _'I just love touching you'." _

Brennan pauses to watch his reaction. He's looking down at his lap now, leaning his arm on the back of the couch. He scoots a little closer to her, propping his head up on one fist along the back of the couch. His expression changes to a broad smile that can best be described as self-congratulatory. When he looks up, she raises an eyebrow, and meets his gaze, smiling a big Bones-y smile as she continues, almost in a whisper_.__ "Then there's, 'Oh, you smell so good. I love doing this with you.' _And then there are my personal favorites, _"You're so delicious, I could just eat you for dinner_', and the ever popular announcement that I thought you would drop after the first couple of times, _"Hey people,__ I'm having sex with Bones!' __Followed by the fake sound of a crowd roaring."_

"Now THAT, I remember," he says, nodding and covering his eyes, chuckling. "Hey, I'm making up for lost time, trying to stimulate your tubular ceramic cortex," he says, pinching the bridge of his nose and recalling what she's told him about the brain being the largest sex organ. "I'll probably be saying that for the next six years." His lips are pressed together, but he's grinning ear to ear. He shakes his head. It's one of those 'Oh, what am I going to do with you' or 'I can't take you anywhere' expressions. After a moment of looking in her eyes, he leans in and kisses her just behind her ear. She can feel his warm breath on her neck and it sends an unexpected shiver through her. She leans into his kiss, closing her eyes, laying her cheek against his. It's been a while since they shared this kind of intimate moment in the middle of the night.

"Okay. Let's go!" he announces, taking her hand and standing up. It looks like he's going to help her up off of the couch and take her into the bedroom for some hot pregnant sex.

"Really?" She's surprised. _But he seemed so adamant a moment ago. This looks promising,_ she thinks. _Thank the heavens!_ A lot of the hormones that support the growth and development of a fetus are the same as the ones present when one is in love or feeling romantically inclined. In other words, Brennan could use a little loving, and the orgasm-inducing oxytocin will help her sleep.

"No!" He says, incredulously. "Come on, Bones! Are you kidding me?"

"Booth," she chuffs and whines, disappointed. "I need to sleep! And I miss you, and, you know … I miss that," she says, defeated, glancing below his waistline, sighing. "I miss curling up in your arms." She pauses, looking up at him in the darkness. "Look at me!" She looks down at her round body and shrugs. "My breasts are huge. My belly is huge. You can't even get your arms all the way around me anymore. I feel like I literally … literally … can't get close to you anymore … I want …" She shrugs. "I need … that physical proximity with you, with your body, but there's all this in the way, " she says, frustrated and resigned, gesturing toward her swollen body parts. "I miss that. I miss being completely enveloped in your arms," she mumbles, a catch in her throat, her brows furrowed. "It's not just the hormones, Booth. I miss the feeling of being alone together." A tear breaks free from the corner of her eye and falls, as if crawling, down her cheek.

"I just don't feel comfortable," he says, compassionately this time, sitting back down beside her, taking her hand in his. "What if you go into labor and I have to deliver her myself? What if we harm her somehow?" He says, genuine concern and a little desperation in his voice and eyes. He feels helpless. This has become a silent recurring theme, his helplessness. Every day he watches his family growing, literally, before his eyes and he worries constantly about her, about both of them, his girls. He tries not to think about it. Sometimes, it's too much and he does something rash, which only irritates her. But he can't stop himself. It's a base instinct – wanting to protect those you love. And he feels helpless sometimes … like now.

"And ... it just … it feels … wrong somehow, knowing she can hear every sound we make," he continues, almost begging her to understand. "You wouldn't make love with a baby sleeping in the bassinet right next to the bed, would you?"

"Booth, Indian cultures living in family tents with absolutely no privacy made love laying right next to their children," she explains, trying to sound reasonable and calm. "Nothing between the copulating couple and the open air but a couple of animal pelts. There is no proof that those children suffered from the exposure to their parents' sexual activity. Actually, it was probably quite educational -"

"Ohhhhh!" Booth lets out a whining gasp as if he's just heard something he really wishes he hadn't heard.

"Booth, the fact that those children went on to conduct themselves in the very same manner when they became adults is a testament to the fact that -"

"Bones! This is America! In America, we make love in private!"

"Uh, Booth. I was talking about the American Indians," she says gently, apologetically. "And anyway, sex wasn't what I was going to say in the first place."

"What? Then why'd you put me through all that?" He drops his forehead in his palm. She shrugs and chuckles. "So, what did you really have in mind?"

"First, a glass of water and a trip to the bathroom. Then, do you think you could sit behind me in bed and let me lean on you? I know it isn't an optimal sleeping position for you, but I think I could get the angle just right if I lay on my side with my torso slightly elevated. Then I could use one of your legs as a buffer between my knees so my innominate isn't aggravated—"

"Tell you what," says Booth, interrupting her and already handing her a tall glass of water, then leading her toward the bathroom by a hand on the small of her back. "You do what you have to do. When you're done, I'll be out here waiting and you can direct me where you need me to go."

"Awww," she coos. "Are you sure, Booth? You may end up not getting much sleep –"

"Or, I might sleep like baby, who knows? I'm willing to do anything once," he says, chuckling.

"Except have sex with a pregnant woman in the later part of her third trimester, apparently," Brennan mumbles snarkily. Booth rolls his eyes at her, quietly exasperated.

* * *

><p>They are settled in the middle of the bed, him half-sittinghalf-laying behind her so she can lay between his legs, leaning her back against his chest while turned slightly on her left side. There are pillows propped everywhere.

"Now, see? This isn't so bad," says Booth, encouragingly. Brennan sighs.

"Well, wait till we've been like this for a couple of hours. You may change your mind," she says, giggling. "This is kind of like that kangaroo care you told me about, remember?"

"Yep, I do," he says, nodding. "Laying the baby on your bare chest under your shirt to lull him to sleep. We did that a lot with Parker when he was first born."

"This just might do the trick for me," she says, sighing and closing her eyes. "You may not get any sleep, however." She looks up into his eyes apologetically.

"I wasn't planning on sleeping anyway. I've been thinking a lot about my dad."

"Oh?"

"Uh, yeah." He shrugs, gently running his fingers through her hair, tucking it behind her ear. "It wasn't until Jared was about three years old that things got bad. I don't know, maybe he was a lush my whole life and I was unaware of it until it got really bad."

"Huh. What made you think of that, Booth?"

"Well, there were things that my dad said. I got the impression that it was the stress, the responsibility of being the man of the house, of having two boys. That's what I thought drove him to drink."

"It didn't _make_ him drink. Lots of people have stress in their lives and don't drink, Booth."

"Yeah, but my dad had this uncontrollable anger. He could be mean. He'd scream things at us, hurtful things."

"Booth, you are not the reason your father drank. Nor are you the reason he was physically abusive. That was not your fault." She moves to the side a bit so she can see his face if she turns her head.

"I know. I have no doubt about that," he says, meeting her gaze and holding it until he knows she believes him.

"But I wonder, what pushed him over the edge, you know? Was there a trigger? Something I should watch for myself? I mean, what makes one man decide he needs to get regular exercise, and the next guy decide he needs to drink? Or gamble? Or hit something? Are some people incapable of handling the stress in a healthy way without taking it out on themselves or others?" He looks at her, concern and confusion in his eyes. "Do I even get to choose which kind of guy I am? Or is that already hard-wired into me somehow?" He shrugs, shaking his head.

They both think silently for a moment. Brennan wiggles around, trying to get comfortable again. Booth runs one of his hands up and down her arm and shoulder. It is a gesture meant to soothe himself as much as it soothes her.

"Do you think it's possible for a person to develop a substance abuse problem later in life?"

"Sure. That's how people get addicted to analgesics, pain killers. Diamorphines such as heroin, fentanyl, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, methadone, morphine, opium, oxycodone, tramadol."

Forcing out two lungs fill of air, an act which seems to deflate him, he shrugs, continuing to rub her arm. Finally, he rests his hand on her hip as he considers what she's just said.

"There is substantial addiction research being conducted right now," Brennan continues. "Dr. David Goldman from the Laboratory of Neurogenetics at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism is one of the highly respected authorities on this topic. He has overseen numerous studies and written highly regarded articles on the findings of his research. Dr. Goldman contends that genetics merely load the gun, it's the environment that pulls the trigger."

"Meaning what, that it is in my _genes_ … but my childhood has a lot to do with it to? That's not too reassuring, Bones."

"Listen, a child of an alcoholic is eight times more likely to develop an addiction, but that doesn't mean he will." She pauses, as Booth rests his chin on the crown of her head. "Dr. Goldman says developing healthy coping mechanisms is what makes the difference," she says, attempting to sound helpful.

"I am an addict, Bones! I can't gamble. If I do … I go crazy. I find it hard, really hard, to stop."

"But you've got that under control, Booth," she insist, taking both of his arms and pulling them around herself firmly. It's an inside-out hug of sorts, being that she's on the inside of it. The caterpillar hugging its cocoon.

"Yeah, but I think about it every day, feel the urge all the time." No one says anything for a moment.

"Every day?"

"Yes. I think about … I just, I think about it, okay?"

"Okay," she says, nodding reassuringly. Her nod conveys, 'I believe you and I'm not concerned'. "What keeps you from doing it, then?"

"Well, you for one. Our life. Our work. Parker. Being a father to Parker has been one of the best things for me. I remind myself constantly of the damage gambling did to my life. When Parker was a baby I was determined to quit. I realized that I couldn't risk losing my paycheck when I wasn't going to be the only one affected."

"It won't take over you life again, Booth."

"But what if it does? What if things get more stressful than they've ever been?" _What if you get sick?_ He's thinking about worse case scenarios. 'Catastrophizing', Gordon Gordon once called it. _What if … something happens during childbirth? _He wonders, shivering involuntarily._ What if something goes horribly wrong you don't survive? Or if I fail to protect you during one of our cases, and you get hurt or killed? What if you get afraid and leave me? What if I … just can't cope … and I try to gamble away my problems. What if I crawl down into that hole, thinking a big win will solve all our problems, but I destroy our life instead?_

Sensing his turmoil through his silence, his shallow breaths, and the way his muscles have tightened under her arms, she sits up.

"Booth. Booth! Look at me," she says, taking his face in her hands. She looks in his eyes, furrowing her brow, focusing on one of his chocolate brown eyes, then the other. "What could be worse than Broadsky? What could be worse than the Grave Digger? Worse than a brain tumor? Worse than being apart for nine months? All of that is gone, Booth. It's in the past. And there's no reason to believe it's coming back."

He looks into her reassuring eyes, hears her confident tone, feels her sincere concern for him, and his eyes get glossy. He can't tell her his worst fears. Some fears a man keeps to himself. No sense in both of them worrying about these fears. They are not rational.. They are there, like an encapsulated malignant tumor, a time bomb ticking at an unknown metronomic pace. Any day, silently, stealthily a couple of cells could break free from the mother ship, attacking healthy tissue. Any day now the bomb's pace could accelerate, until it's too late.

Booth shakes his head, wishing he could erase these fears like clingy grey powder inside an Etch A Sketch™ that can 'erase' an entire image with one shake. _Why do I torture myself this way? Focus on the positive, _he tells himself._ I've got a beautiful … I've got Bones, who loves me. A daughter on the way. And a healthy son who lights up my life like a lone candle on a starless night. _

"What are you thinking, love?" She whispers gently, leaning her hand on the mattress to the right of his leg so she can continue facing him, run her fingers soothingly through his hair. She loves how childlike he looks when his hair points every which way when she plays with it. Brennan rarely uses endearments, she prefers his name, Booth. But she senses that this is a good time to make an exception.

"What I'm thinking is," he says, looking down, avoiding her eyes at first, and swallowing dryly, his brow pinched. "Uh, there were years when I was very young and he was sober. I have memories from those times. They are vague … almost more like dreams than memories, but I know they are real." He looks at her now. "How did he go from that to what he became?"

"While those are valid questions, Booth. It is quite likely that they are unanswerable with the information we currently have," she says, grimacing apologetically, tilting her head. "Angela says, in these cases, we should focus on the good memories. Tell me one of your memories, Booth. Your good memories."

He looks at her thoughtfully for a moment. All day today, memories have been flooding back to him. Last night she'd said that quantum physicists postulate that time is not linear, and that every moment is happening at the same time.

"Good times with your dad are happening right now. They are always happening," she reminds him now. "You have a right to keep those memories alive, remember?" Placing her palm on his chest, she leans forward and kisses him on the lips sweetly. When she moves away, she smiles at him encouragingly.

"Okay," says Booth, giving her a soft yet penetrating stare. "You're a good, good person, Bones. Thank you." He kisses her back quickly, then leans forward to slide another pillow behind his back, before settling once more against the headboard. For a moment, he chews on the inside of his lip, licks his lips, sticking his tongue out just a little as he concentrates. His eyebrows raise as a light bulb goes on. He nods, then he smiles, relaxing, pulling her back down onto his chest and enveloping as much of her as he can in his arms.

"This has got to be one of my favorite memories. It's another one from Dad's shop. I'd forgotten about it until this morning when I heard _'If you leave me now'_ on the oldies channel." He looks down at her, admiring the dark fringe of her eyelashes juxtaposed against the delicate paleness of her skin. He traces the outline of her face with his thumb, from her temple, down her cheek, and along the length of her jawline. At her chin, he raises her lips up to his and closes his eyes, kissing her once more.

"How does it go?" She asks against his lips, kissing him back, feeling lost in the sensation, but anchored by his arms around her. This is what she misses ... the tender, intimate exchanges that filled the first handful of months of this new dynamic to their relationship. He gets that. There's just so much going on right now between work and baby preparations and Parker. It's easy to get out of the habit of taking time to relax and be affectionate with each other. When he opens his eyes, she's smiling sweetly, almost dreamily. He smiles back and thanks God that He put this woman in his life.

"You know, the song by _Chicago,_ the band. It came out in the '70s"

"How does it go?"

"You know," says Booth, prodding her, squinting into his past. He starts to whisper-sing the song quietly. Barely making a noise at first, then gaining volume as the melody floats back to him.

"_If you leave me now, you take away the biggest part of me.  
>Oh who who who whoo baby please don't go. Bum bum."<em>

As he continues to hum, Brennan recognizes the melody, a smile spreading across her lips and spilling into her eyes.

"_And if you leave now," _they intone together in the dark,  
>"<em>you take away the very heart of me.<br>__Who hoo woo woo woo woo woo Baby please don't go.  
><em>_Who hoo woo woo woo woo woo I just want you to stay."_

They both chuckle. Brennan can feel him body relaxing around her. She closes her eyes and murmurs the lyrics along with him as he begins the next verse, swaying side to side following the rhythm of his childhood memory.

"_A love like ours is love that's hard to find  
><em>_Mmmmmm. How could we let it slip away?  
><em>_We've come to far to leave it all behind …"_

"Dad always had a rock station playing quietly in the background at the shop. _Chicago_ was one of his favorite bands." Booth chuckles for a moment, recalling the names of several of those bands. The Commodores, Dr. Hook. Queen with Bohemian Rhapsody. The Steve Miller Band. England Dan and John Ford Coley.

"How old were you then?"

"Knee high to a grasshopper, Dad used to say, heh," grunts Booth. "I must have been about five years old. You might even have been born yet."

"Hm. And yet, you knew the names of all the bands on the radio at your dad's shop?" Brennan looks doubtful.

"No, at the time I had no idea who they were. Later, when I was about fifteen ... about four years after … we started living with Pops … I went through a period when I was obsessed with those old songs."

"You were reliving those memories."

"I guess I was. They reminded me of the part of Dad I loved."

"So tell me your memory, Booth," she says, snuggling down a little further against his torso, wrapping her arms around one of his when he lays his hand over the baby's kicking bulge.

"We had a couple of years when I was very, very young. Jared was a baby, or less than two years old at least. Mom needed me out of the house for a while. Dad used to take me to his shop … his barber shop. He had one of those … rotating red, white, and blue striped barber poles, right outside his door," he says, making a stirring motion in the air with his index finger. "Just like you sometimes still see in front of classic barber shops."

Bones nods, running her thumb up and down the vein protruding from the inside of the bicep she's wrapped herself around. Booth rubs circles over her abdomen where he last saw something move.

"So … he'd take me to his shop in the mornings," he says, cracking a reminiscent smile. "Heh, I was so short then, my feet didn't even touch the floor when I sat at the kitchen table," he says. "That's when Pops started calling me 'Shrimp'. Anyway, Dad would sit me on a Sears & Roebuck catalog in his barber chair. All I could see was the top half of my head when he swiveled me around toward the mirror," Booth pauses, smiling briefly at the memory.

"Sometimes he'd spin me around in that chair. If he was between customers, he'd recline the chair, cover my face in a hot towel, and wrap a dry towel around my shoulders. After a couple of minutes, just when I thought my skin was going to slide off my face, he'd whip off the hot towel, and cover my face with his very own brand of shaving soap. I still remember … his shaving soap was caked in the bottom of an old shaving mug. I always thought it looked very distinguished, something only a proper man would use. Printed on the mug in brown ink, it said:

_"Perfection in Tonsorial Artistry.  
>Colonel Ichabod Conk<br>__Unique Quality, Unique Product  
><em>_Created to Restore Joy to Shaving  
><em>_For the Gentleman of Superior Taste in Grooming"_

"I always thought 'tonsorial artistry' sounded really weird. Wondered if Dad could cut out tonsils with that straight razor of his. Heh!"

"Tonsorial, Booth, means 'relating to hairdressing," she says, grinning.

"There was the face of this guy who looked like the president in the middle of the fancy words," says Booth, chuckling, then continuing. "Dad had to get the shaving soap wet to lather it up. He'd whip it up into a smooth froth with his ivory-handled badger hair shaving brush. The brush and the soap smelled like cloves, with a hint of almond. The soap had something in it that made your skin tingle," he says, laying his fingers on his face where the brush would have stroked his cheek, wafting the aroma of the home brew over young Seeley Booth's nostrils. "Sometimes he'd put a dollop of shaving cream on my nose, just to make me laugh," he chuckles, touching her nose with his index finger. She smiles in return.

"Then he'd take a comb, pretending it was one of those long, straight razors he used to shave his finest customers. He'd use the back of the comb, and he'd clear the shaving cream off my face, stroke by stroke, slowly and methodically, humming to a Chicago or an Elton John tune whole time. All I could hear … I always closed my eyes during this part … all I could hear was him humming, and the sound of the bottom of his black, leather work shoes, shuffling on the floor as he moved around me. When he was finished removing all the shaving cream, he'd rub my face with the dry towel from around my neck, then he'd tickle me, right here," he says, putting his hand to the middle of his chest. "Then he'd douse his left hand in aftershave … Old Spice … vigorously rub his hands together, then playfully slap my cheeks and neck, covering me in Old Spice."

"Sounds like a wonderful memory," she says, smiling gently, not wanting to disturb his reverie.

"Yes, it is," he says, looking at her once again. "I've never told anyone about that. No one. 'Till you."

She purses her lips, reaching out and placing her other hand on top of his. Her skin is warm and soft against his. He rotates his hand so its palm up, sliding his fingers between hers. He looks at their intertwined fingers, her other hand still lying on his forearm. He thinks. She sits. Watches. Waits. He shrugs.

"I loved my dad," he says. "Even though he … even though he … did what he did, and as much as he did it," he says, looking up into her clear, cool hazel eyes, finding acceptance in them. "I didn't want to leave him, but I had to," he whispers, looking back at their hands, squeezing her fingers, leaning back against his headrest beside her. "I had to do it … for Jared," he says, sighing.

He's rubbing her fingers with his, which are still wrapped around hers. It's a self-comforting gesture.

"I loved my father, Bones," he says, almost apologetically. "I loved him, even when I was hating him. Even when he was … you know. But I hid it because I thought there was something really wrong about me if I felt that way about a man who violated the trust of his own … his own children. His little kids, Bones. How sick is that, loving a person who knocks you on the floor?" he says, pained, momentarily unable to swallow.

"It's not sick, Booth. It is predictable. Dysfunctional, but very common."

Booth is well aware that abused spouses are exponentially more likely to remain with their abuser than to leave. But do they stay because of love? He's read the semi-annual reports from 'The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence'. He knows that women who leave their batterers are at 75% greater risk of severe injury or death than those who stay. So ... that sounds like fear and survival. But Booth knows he really did love his father. Maybe if he had stayed with his dad, Ed would have beaten the love out of him, or ... Anyway, the eventual outcome for Booth and Jared could have been very different if Pops hadn't rescued them.

"Yes, I know it is common," he inhales deeply through his nose, exhales the same way. "But, what does that say about what love is to me?"

"It says you have a tremendous capacity for it," she says, lowering her chin, but smiling up into his eyes.

He sighs heavily again. Wrinkles his forehead, finally able to swallow.

"Maybe you've never told anyone about this before … but now you've told me … and I still love you, even though you loved the man who hurt you more than any human being has ever hurt you," she says.

"I didn't mean to lay all of this on you …" he says, looking at their hands again.

Bones shrugs. "All of your secrets are safe with me, Booth. You know that," she says. "Looks like I'm not the only one with a couple of skeletons in my closet," she says, winking.

"Bones …." he says, smiling wanly, but appreciatively. He chuckles, as does she. "Now, THAT was a triple entendre, I believe," he says. "Well played."

"Oh! You're right … because 1) I have secrets in my past, 2) you have secrets in your past, and 3) I really do, literally, have skeletons in my closet," she says, impressed with herself. "Damn, I'm good."

"Yes, you are," he replies, smiling at her, appreciatively. "Thank you, Bones," he says, "not for the triple entendre …"

"I know," she says, smiling. "I know."

After a quiet moment, he adds, "You know those things you said I say?"

She looks up at him, her brow furrowed.

"You know, when we're 'bow-chicka- bow-wow?"

"Oh, yeah," she says, giggling.

"Those are the same thoughts I think every time I look at you," he says, chuckling, then winking.

She stares at him for a moment.

"Why am I not surprised?" She says as he kisses her on the forehead. "Why am I not surprised?"

* * *

><p><em>How can anyone follow-up this episode? Thank you to DB, ED, HH and SquareChicken <em>  
><em>for giving us this early Christmas present right before we all go home to be with the <em>  
><em>people we love the most (and who make us crazy the most, in some cases!). It will be <em>  
><em>a little while before I post a chapter for Episode 5, The Twist in the Twister. <em>  
><em>The When and the How: A Bone to Pick, my first love, will have my undivided <em>  
><em>attention for the next several weeks ... or at least until Tuesday ... D<em>

_Happy holidays to you all! Drive safely and spread the love to everyone you see._

_~ MoxieGirl44_  
><em>(Please note: I'm changing my office name to MoxieGirl44 so it's the same here as on Twitter) <em>


	5. And Baby Makes Three

_Dear Readers: This is not the grand post-birth chapter I'd had planned for you : (This is something else that came up and fell together. Rather than wait and give it to you later ... I'm giving it to you now. It is merely a snapshot of what it might have been like for B&B trying to get home from their birthing barn. I hope you enjoy it!_

* * *

><p><em><strong>COMING SOON:<strong> Following this post will be my INTENDED chapter for follow-up to **The Prisoner in the Pipe**. It is called **"The After in the Birth"** I wanted to give you a little treat by including a preview to that chapter which will be coming shortly! ~ Enjoy!_

**_Excerpt from The After in the Birth:_**

_"I can't believe I delivered a baby. Not may people can say that!" Booth chuckled, incredulous, as he rubbed his face with his hands and leaned against the setee right next to Bones' glider rocker in the dimly lit nursery where Christine Angela would spend her first night._

_"Uh, about 77% of the adult female population, actually, Booth," Brennan replied, looking up at him and smiling peacefully, then back down at the newborn at her breast._

_"Yeah – the birth mothers, Bones, but how many people can say they were the one with the catcher's mitt watching the whole deal and cutting the cord … laying the newly born miracle on the mother's chest? Huh?" When he claps once and rubs his hands together, the baby starts, then settles back down into the warmth provided by her mother's body._

_"Booth, not so loud," admonishes Brennan without looking up at him. "Look at her, she just goes right back to breastfeeding. That you can settle with such facility is encouraging, because you have a noisy father," she chuckles, running her index finger gently from the baby's forehead down to the tip of her nose. "Yes, you do! You have a very noisy father, little girl."_

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>

**.**

**.**

**And Baby Makes Three**

"Did they have the Britex Companion infant carrier/car seat we wanted?" Asks Brennan anxiously when Booth returns to the SUV energetically pushing a quivering and cacophonous metal shopping cart across the gravely Super Target Store parking lot.

"Yep!" Confirms Booth confidently, before flinging open the top-hinged lift gate, giving him full access to the back cargo area of his Sequoia SUV.

"That's the one with the patented True Side Impact Protection with extraordinarily generous head support—."

"—Which provides advanced protection from injury in the event of a side-impact collision? Yes, yes, yes, Bones. Listen, I promise I got the right one!" Booth insists, chuckling to himself. Hefting the box out of the cart with a grunt, his tongue curling over the right corner of his mouth, he deposits the awkward box on the ground behind the car and returns the cart to the cart corral.

:::::::  
>:::::::<p>

Brennan had refused to bring Christine into the germ-infested store within just hours after her birth. She sits now in the back seat on the passenger side of the SUV cradling their newborn daughter in her arms. "I should have asked you to get some baby clothes and a blanket," she mumbles, realizing that Christine Angela is still swaddled in several tee shirts Booth kept in a duffle bag in the car for wardrobe emergencies.

"Look, she'll be fine. Those are clean shirts! And we'll be on our way in five minutes."

"It's just that …" she begins again, already having mentally switched from thinking about the tee shirts back to worrying about the car seat. "It's just that Consumer Reports recommends we get _this _particular model if we intend to spend a great deal of time traveling, Booth," she grimaces. "If we intend to take that trip in July…" her voice trails off as she peers into the bundle and begins gently bouncing the baby up and down.

:::::::  
>:::::::<p>

Three months ago, they'd purchased one of the highly rated Britex Companion infant carrier car seats. However, as luck would have it, today it is sitting in the trunk of Brennan's car, which is parked in the garage of their newly renovated home fifty miles away.

"This car seat has the tangle-free, five-point harness system," she had told him one night as she surfed the web, looking at all the available choices. "And if you don't believe the propaganda Consumer Reports puts forth, which is most likely influenced by advertising dollars rather than hard science—" she'd told him then, peering over the top of her laptop toward his profile as he focused on the game on the screen. "I will remind you that Angela and Jack recommended this particular car seat. Believe me, Angela conducted an intensive investigation prior to making a purchasing decision. She even found her way into private documentation containing reverse engineered testing results of each model she was interested in. In crash test analysis, the Britex—"

Booth had stopped listening at that point. He had recognized this as the monotonous part of Brennan's process – the spewing of details which he couldn't care less about and sometimes didn't even understand. Besides, he knew that in the end she would consider the research, weigh the options, make a choice, and then present them to him for possible debate and eventually, final approval. If he had questions, she'd answer them, or find answers to them. In the end, his truth was that he was happy as long as she was happy, so he usually went along with whatever she recommended. Their individual, yet accepted modes of reaching a team decision allowed the process to be as complicated as necessary to satisfy Brennan's need for sound information, and as simple as necessary for Booth not to lose complete interest. They each knew that this is how things worked between them, and they'd agreed that as long as it worked, it was an acceptable practice. For now, and in regard to the car seat, it worked; that was all that mattered for them.

:::::::  
>:::::::<p>

"Bones, relax! I got you the correct car seat. See the name here?" Booth asked. Holding the purchase up at eye level, he points at the bright red lettering of each individual word splashed across the top of the box as he sounds out the words like a first grader just learning to read. "_Bri__-tex Com-__pan__-ion __In__-fant __Car__-ri-er __Car__Seat__." _

As Brennan looks on, Booth furrows his brow and squints while he assesses the difficulty of installing this seat. The life-size glossy image on the box makes it look like it would be simple. "How hard can it be," mumbles Booth to no one in particular.

Pulling out his pocketknife and unfurling the appropriate blade, Booth begins to cut through the packaging tape. Grunting and groaning, Booth pulls, yanks, kicks, and scrapes at the box trying to release the contents, reminding Brennan of the manner in which a teenager might attempt to kick off his or her still double-knotted tennis shoes. Finally, Booth unceremoniously flips the box upside down and forces the tightly-packed awkwardly-shaped item to shoot out of the box. "_You just gotta be smarter than the box, heh," _he mumbles under his breath.

Next, he attacks the plastic that is obnoxiously wrapped and taped around the straps, cushions, and hardware of their new purchase.

"Booth, what's happening to me? I'm a bundle of anxious nerves!" Brennan disdains, feeling another shock of heat glance across her cheeks and brow as a post-delivery hormone rush makes its presence known.

"It's okay, Bones! You gave birth a mere hour and a half ago! No anesthesia, no help from your doula, no bed, and barely any warning. Cut yourself some slack. You are entitled to a little case of the crazies today," he chuckled, lifting the awkward pieces off the ground and setting them in the cargo area of the SUV.

:::::::  
>:::::::<p>

Thirty minutes earlier, it had taken Booth ten minutes to convince Brennan to get into the car and accompany him to the store to make this purchase. At first, she was adamant that he go alone, acquire the seat, and bring it back to the barn where she and Christine would be waiting for him. From there they would safely proceed—having secured their daughter into a Department of Transportation certified infant car seat with a five-point harness system.

"You know they don't let newborn infants leave a hospital premises unless they have a board-certified infant carrier," she had persisted. "And you're the guy who thinks hospitals know what is best when it comes to newborns!"

"How could I not know that, it's the fifth time you've mentioned it in the last three minutes!"

Brennan shot him the stink eye. "Sarcasm and hyperbole are not helpful," she had contended.

"Look, we're not likely to have an accident on the way to the store," he'd tried to assure her anxiously. Leaving her here in this barn, at night, all alone, after having just given birth was absolutely not an option as far as he was concerned. Then, for a terrifying moment the possibility that the completely unexpected really could happen, that he _could _get them into an accident, gave him a flash of chill down his back. _Anything could happen. There are no guarantees in life, right?_ He'd thought, then quickly countered himself with, _Shake it off, shake it off_. _That's __**neither rational nor helpful**__! We will be perfectly fine going fifteen miles down the road at thirty-five miles per hour. _Of course, then he'd had to give himself a mental head slap for talking himself off the cliff with the same logic Brennan regularly and irritatingly used against him during their frequent debates - the rationality argument.

"I will drive at the low end of the speed limit the whole way to the store," he'd assured her, a pleading lilt to his voice, "if that's what you would prefer. You're going to be holding her the whole time. You'll be in the back seat; the safest seat in the car! She'll be fine. Our baby will be fine. Okay?"

She'd looked up into his eyes soulfully, caught between fear of the unknown and a desire to trust this man she'd already trusted with her life, her happiness and her metaphorical heart. "Okay," she finally said, with a single nod. "I accept your logic. With all possible precautions observed, the likelihood of a collision is negligible enough that I will agree to do as you suggest. But, let's make an expedient departure before I change my mind and duck out."

Booth had sighed heavily with relief, smiled gratefully into the beautiful clear blue eyes that he regularly lost himself in, and kissed her on the forehead as he pulled her into his arms, nothing between them but their daughter wrapped in clean tee shirts. Standing in the cool night air surrounded by the sounds of farm animals and the scent of sweet fresh straw, Special Agent Seeley Booth had pressed the tips of his fingers in soothing concentric circles across the back of the woman who lit his world on fire. Brennan had closed her eyes and leaned into him, leaning her forehead into his shoulder. "You go ahead and get into the car," he'd said quietly, his lips pressed against the top of her head. "I'll grab all this stuff and be right there. We'll be fine. Trust me." Then he'd added, "And it's _chicken out_, not _duck out,_ Bones." She'd heard him chuckling lightly as he turned to gather their things. She couldn't help noticing how reassuring a simple thing like the sound of his gentle laughter had become for her.

:::::::  
>:::::::<p>

"Did they have the color we wanted?" Brennan asked from the back seat of the Sequoia as Booth wrangled with the brand new infant car seat.

"Uhhmm," he begins, stalling for a moment. This Target Store hadn't had Brennan's preferred color, 'Unity Blue', in stock. What they did have was Onyx Black. "Bones, they were out of stock in the blue color," he says cautiously, not sure how disappointed she might be.

Three months ago when she chose this particular style and they agreed they would want two of them, but only bought one to begin with, she had sincerely hoped the car seats would match so they could transfer the carrier from one car to the other without having to disrupt a sleeping baby. The carrier portion of the car seat can be easily lifted out of the base, carried around, then clicked securely back in place. If the car seats were identical, the carriers would be interchangeable.

"Well, what _did _they have, Booth?" She asks in a tiny voice, resigned to the inevitability of disappointment, but also surprisingly content in the realization that what had seemed so important three months ago, something as meaningless as the color of in infant car seat, no longer matter at all. Not at all! So much of life has changed since then.

"Your car is blue, Bones, so that first seat we bought matches your car. The color I bought here is called Onyx Black, see? Won't that look nice inside my Sequoia? It couldn't be more perfect!" He declares, attempting to put an advantageous spin on this news.

Brennan shrugs. "Well, it is the exact same model, so it really shouldn't matter, right?"

Booth looks into the car from the cargo space doorframe and smiles at his beautiful mate, grateful for her accommodating response. She smiles back shyly, uncomfortable with the abrupt fluctuations of her moods of late. They make her feel unstable, anxious at times. She finds it quite disconcerting. For a moment their eyes linger, both thinking about how strange it is to be in this situation. Together they have faced more than their share of life-threatening situations and emerged unscathed. Well, okay,_ mostly_ unscathed. Today, here they are tackling something as simple as making it 50 miles down the road without falling to pieces over the safety of their baby.

Booth winks at Brennan and sends her an affectionate smile, which lands on her like a fresh ray of sunshine through a kitchen window in the middle of winter. She returns the smile, grateful. She presses her lips into a humble grimace, thinking, _I love this man. He understands my concerns and is tolerant of my vacillating hormone levels. He makes me happy._

In response to Brennan's return smile and tender look, Booth relaxes, and returns to his search for the car seat instructions. He finally finds them wrapped around some hardware and stuck in the back of the seat.

"Do you know how to install it?" Inquires Brennan, unable to extricate herself completely from Booth's progress.

"I will if you stop asking me all these questions so I can read the directions," he says, gently and confidently without looking up.

"I told you we should have kept the car seat we bough in the car … just in case."

"But we didn't know whose car to put it in, remember?" He says, making the car sink a bit as he sits down on the edge of the opened cargo area.

She's silent. She shrugs. "I do remember," she sighs, bending at the neck to rub noses with her sleeping daughter, pulling into her own lungs the scent of sweet race-perpetuation. _Amygdala,_ she mumbles, exhaling. Closing her eyes and dipping her nose closer to the baby's neck, she registers the sensation of her system being infused with maternal hormones gone rampant. The effect is one of floating on a soft cloud, not even thinking about falling to the ground. Blissful peace.

"These instructions are ridiculous!" Blurts Booth after ten minutes.

"Maybe I can figure it out, Booth. My expertise is not limited to the field of forensic anthropology. I am quite excellent at applying my knowledge od sequencing and physics to pedestrian tasks such as—."

"I can assemble and install a simple car seat, Bones!" shouts Booth defensively, but not unkindly. "Geez, it's been a decade since Parker was this small. Things have changed. Look at all these belts and cushy things – how will we be able to even see her once she's strapped into this contraption?" Booth takes all the pieces to the complicated safety contraption to the back seat side door opposite Brennan.

"Did you get the one that has the carrier than can be taken out and carried around?" She asks once he's got the base up on the seat.

"I got the one you requested, Bones," he says calmly.

:::::::  
>:::::::<p>

Before they'd even left the barn, Brennan had insisted Booth call two different stores until he located the model they had agreed upon. Fortunately, it was a higher end model, so both places had it in stock, but only one had the color they wanted. It took Booth fifteen minutes to convince Brennan to get in the back seat of the car and accompany him to the store to purchase the car seat, from which they could then continue home after a stop at the hospital to ensure that mother and child were both doing as well as they seemed to be. Also, there was the matter of the birth certificate.

It was only because she was exhausted that she'd agreed to ride in the car without protection against accident. She insisted on sitting in the back adjacent to the driver's seat, however, which suited Booth just fine. Though she was perfectly comfortable with the concept of birthing at home, Brennan also appreciated that, without a doula present, that there may have been something she and Booth had overlooked, and it wasn't worth the risk to leave either mother or child's health to providence.

His daughter had already come into the world a vibrant, alert, robust little thing, but it was Brennan that Booth was more concerned about. He's never seen her so pale. Serious complications such as hemorrhaging, low-blood pressure, and dehydration could hamper her progress in recovering from such a traumatic physical event.

After all these two had gone through, after years of longing for each other only to lose each other, then claw their way back to something that proved to be even stronger than the partnership they'd previously enjoyed, there was no way Seeley Booth was going to take any chances.

:::::::  
>:::::::<p>

"Oh, for Pete's sake! The instructions are in Chinese! Look at this," gripes Booth in complete disgust as he throws the thin double-sided 11x17 piece of paper onto the middle of car seat next to Brennan. "And this contraption looks more like a straight jacked attached to a paddle boat than a safety set for an infant!"

"Here," said Brennan, watching him with fatigued amusement. Getting out of the car and coming around to the side where Booth stood, his head hung low, his hands hanging open low on his hips.

"Take the baby. Take Christine," she offers calmly. "Let me look at the instructions."

"Bones, you shouldn't be walking around," he replied wearily resigned. "I'll figure it out!"

"No, Booth. Take her. Remember when you walked in on me at the Jeffersonian surrounded by brightly colored plastic entertainment and transportation devices? Angela and Hodgins couldn't assemble them. They were getting quite frustrated. Then I offered to assist them, asserting my facility with the Chinese language and within a half hour we'd assembled six items!"

Booth stares at her blankly. "I should be able to install a stupid car seat for my own kid," he grunts, frustrated.

"Booth, we are both new at this, you said so yourself. It's been ten years since Parker was an infant. Listen, these objects cannot be assembled intuitively, you have to go about it methodically … and in the manner prescribed by the manufacturers. Even if this had been in English, I doubt either of us would have been able to make cranium nor appendage of them," she assures him.

"Head nor tail? We wouldn't be able to make any sense of the instructions? Is that what you mean?"

Brennan snorts.

"That's what I said. So move over, baby daddy, and let's get this movie on the street."

"Show on the road—'" He corrects her once again.

"Whatever," she chuckles, laying Christine in Booth's arms. He takes his daughter and kisses her on the cheek, swaying back and forth. Brennan hesitates before looking at the instructions again. She watches him, their baby in his arms, knowing that he would do anything and everything to protect and provide for this beautiful child they have made together. He was always giving; giving to her, giving to Parker, and now he would be giving to Christine as well. _How lucky we three are_, she thinks, _to have such a good man, a good father, a loving and gracious protector. How did I become the recipient of this confluence of extraordinary events?_ She knows exactly how, and it hasn't been a smooth journey. But now, things have been gradually coming together to form a life she never thought she would _want,_ much less have. She feels a tart sensation in the bridge of her nose and between her eyes, which she recognizes as a precursor of oncoming tears. As her brain, in response to these thoughts, releases copious amounts of dopamine into her bloodstream, she muses that no matter what it took to get her and Booth to this day ... _whatever_ it took ... it was worth every bit. Every tear, every hurt, every argument, every resentment, every fear, every stupid misunderstanding. All of it.

Taking a step toward Booth, she gently takes his face in her hands and kisses him twice, then tilts her head, smiles sweetly through her eyelashes up into his eyes, and kisses him again, before releasing him. Never losing eye contact with him, she says, with all the sincerity she can muster, "I find that I really am too tired to do this, Booth. Would you mind if I translate, but you assemble the safety seat?" Chewing on the inside of her bottom lip, she adopts the most plaintive expression she can muster. "Please?" She asks with a lilt in her tone.

Booth's shoulders drop and he purses his lips. He knows what she's doing. He also knows that she doesn't know that he knows what she's doing, and he finds her gesture very sweet. Adopting his most charming and grateful expression, he says, "Any thing for you, my brilliant, gorgeous, wonderful, tender-hearted, sexy, baby mama," as he returns Christine to the outstretched arms of her mother. With his hands on Brennan's hips, he pulls her closer, leans over the baby, and nuzzles Brennan's neck. He plants an affectionate kiss on the tender skin in front of her ear, then moves several inches lower to deliver a juicy raspberry into the under side of her jaw. Brennan yelps, giggles, and squirms at the ticklishness of his lips and stubble on her skin, waking Christine who releases a tiny kitty-cat whine.

"Oh, baby girl," chuckles Booth, "Daddy will kiss you too, but you have to wait in line. Mommy will always be my first girl," he coos, putting his lips to Christine's forehead and kissing her twice, stroking her downy little head with his thumb as Brennan looks on, enjoying the father-daughter interaction.

"We really are a family, Booth," Brennan says, just above a whisper when he looks into her eyes, his hand still stroking the baby's skin.

"Of course, we are," he replies. "Just like I always knew we would be."

With Brennan in the back seat on the passenger side of the car and Christine finally ensconced in the plushy cushioned five point safety harness system of her brand new Britex Companion Infant Car Seat, the three are on their way to the hospital, then home.

"Do you have your seat belt on, Bones?" Asks Booth, peering into the rear view mirror.

"Of course I do, Booth. You know I always buckle my seat belt," she insists. "Do you have _yours_ on?"

"I'll put it on," he says. Booth rarely wears a seatbelt, his excuse being that he's a man of action and needs to be able to bolt from the vehicle with barely a moment of forethought. But today they have a baby on board for the very first time. Deciding to pick his battles, this not being a worthy one, he buckles his seatbelt without argument.

"Happy?" He cajoles, peering again into the rear-view mirror.

"Ecstatic," she says, smirking. "You know, it's not just you anymore, Booth." She says, after a long moment. "It's you … and me …"

"… And baby makes three …" he says, finishing her sentence, a sentence that begins their new life.

* * *

><p>So - I know this might not be as fluffy as we'd like to see between these two ... but the next piece has a fair amount of fluff. So hang in there! I hope that y'all enjoyed The Prisoner in the Pipe as much as I did. THe birthing scene, I felt, was wonderfully done. I'm anxious to hear your thoughts about this little vignette!<p>

**Thank you always to my Twitter followers - the ones who interact with me daily  
><strong>**YOU KNOW YOU ROCK IN AN AWESOMESAUCE FASHION!**

Cysvital mickeyBoggs flute1952 Officiallyneil PurpleFlurry031greer7 nico_chas helenamile pie12299 DWBBfan kate_victor DianeWesley imarielle sarahlangworthy cheysma2000 njacob86 _dharmamonkey Dyna63 ErynGrace nannygs MaliBearsBuddy _Alissita RayleenW andreuuchis dovepage wellsbones aveburygirl mef1013 KatieW1129 tinkmygirl SouthunLady BabyBones_S7 beckaboo4 Farrerosa marce_lucia Eva_Anderson Kimber3333 clausalami tokyofish Boneslvr38 NatesMama Seraphine96 DeyKathleen 2minds1ride Liz_chang Bonesfan12 LizDebelzen Boneslover17 merry_traci lizziesplaace amazin_grace88 samnickmike smonosky ILuvDooINBones caracoleta07 OhSnapItzAmelie BrennanNBoth AndreaMaramara9 Beth_winter weeceline peacelovebones some1tookmename rynogeny crayon_Clown david_boreanaz emilydeschanel Erniebeth07FangirlMona corrnaya isjustme_ HeHasthePen #Bones David_Boreanaz EmilyDeschanel Squarechicken HartHansen

appiedala dbGrannyfan AvaniHeath adrisousac n_bjorklund17 chtyagi MeganHalvonik baileyjane13 Lillu38 proudloudlib Stella_UH #Bones Jennifer_G9885 hillhappy bostonlegalgirl kdgteacher7 BoNeS_FaN Brennan_Booth11 farchester Crystauxx AkhNefer sabrina_Demily sabrina_Demily temper_temper buhcula Martreiya queenofthelab96 karinvburkart _serenefire Leesa02 cescacetta zee0076 justlittleirish pie12299 Erniebeth07 yoshimi0701 flacadelgado BethAnn621 gellar1973 scrubalette36 daniellejoy07 kate_victor mariagalician MiaWermuth Joanneh1987 faith_brennan OkBones fofie675 Tanee2003

Very interested in your thoughts...

~MoxieGirl  
>~MoxieGirl44 on Twitter<p> 


	6. The After in the Birth

Disclaimer:I still do not own any of these characters - Hart Hansen and the SquareChicken  
>do - and they are still not returning my phone calls ... *chuckle, wink* ... as if. : )<br>(Hey - A girl's gotta dream, right? This one does, on a daily basis...)

_Dearest Readers: Thank you for all the wonderful comments from the last chapter! You know I couldn't resist writing two chapters for that birth episode - it was just way too cute, and way too moving not to provide a little more texture and A LOT more FLUFF! Will I go back and write chaps for the two episodes I missed? I don't know. Right now I'm heading back over to **The When and the How: A Bone to Pick** because that's really where my heart lives. Thank you for your patience on that story, by the way. That is what has allowed me the time to weigh in on the Season 7 goodness._

_The song referred toward the middle of the chapter, 'How Do You Keep the Music Playing?' is by Alan and Marilyn Bergman for the 1982 film Best Friends. My favorite rendition of it is performed by Patti Austin and James Ingram. I chose this song because it asks the quintessential question we all ask once we finally find that one person we want to write the stories of our lives with: How do we keep it going? Every time I listen to this song I have to remind myself to breathe, it moves me that much. I listened to it at least twenty times while writing this chapter. You can find it elsewhere on the internet._

**_A Very Personal THANK YOU and *smash tackle hug* to Catarina AKA 'BostonLegalGirl' who recently defended my honor._**

* * *

><p><strong>The After in the Birth<br>**The second vignette set to coincide with S7E7 _The Prisoner in the Pipe_

Brennan removes the damp towel from around her head and brushes her hair out in long slow strokes as if in a trance. Since leaving the barn in the country where Christine was born, the manger, as Booth called it, her mood has vacillated several times between maternal bliss and an odd discomfort at the swiftness of the abrupt changes Brennan has undergone. The bliss is natural; she'll take the bliss any day. However, she's aware that it is hormonally induced, the flip side of which is the counterbalancing crash from the morphine-like effects of the natural high.

The body that appears in her mirror as she swipes at the condensation on the glass is startlingly unfamiliar. She winces as she examines the current version of her physical form. This is no longer the body that so recently changed weekly, and then daily, as she and Booth read, with equal parts excitement and consummate awe, about every little advancement occurring within the developing fetus in her womb.

That body, her body, had been a strange yet exciting body; a burgeoning vessel teeming with heat and industry. The body before her tonight isn't the body she recognizes from before her pregnancy either. _It will never be the same, _she tells herself unemotionally, circumspectly leaning her head to one side then the other, squinting.

_Well,_ she says to her mirror image, _it is impossible to stretch, strain, pull, and push, a body; or to increase the blood volume by fifty percent and the overall weight by twenty-five to thirty percent while taxing its every resource for the greater part of a year, without irreversibly altering it in some way. This is a scientific certainty_. It fits with the laws of nature. _The value of said body remains the same. Emotions may change, but they are irrelevant, _she thinks, trying to set aside a disappointment-laced darkness that rests heavily on her lungs, _Aren't they? Or is it the hormones toying with me again?_

The cool blue eyes staring back at her in the mirror tonight are comfortingly familiar, clear and intelligent. _I am the same person, _she assures herself_. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts and separate from the product it produces. _She acknowledges her unfamiliar emotional discomfort in viewing her physical changes as merely hormonal sentiment, but finds herself incapable of banishing them from her consciousness nonetheless. _It is disconcerting to have been a vessel for such a long time and then to suddenly cease being one. These thoughts are nonproductive and irrational_, she chastises herself sternly, closing her eyes and centering herself by thinking about her baby.

She had read that post-partum anxiety could be alleviated by touching, looking at, or conjuring an image of her baby. These activities would initiate a pituitary gland release of soothing beta-endorphins and oxytocin hormones. Retreating to her mammalian brain, she focuses until her shoulders drop, her breathing slows, and her facial muscles relax_._

Donning her robe, she continues her soothing mental exercises. _Just ride the wave_, she reminds herself, closing her eyes as she takes several slow breaths again. _What goes up must come down_, she hears Booth's voice saying in her head. _This too shall pass, Bones. This too shall pass._

Despite her attempt to soothe herself, she finds it difficult to deny the tangible proof of her body's metamorphosis. _It is what it is,_ she tells herself. The body her eyes reside in tonight is a weary, silent, ghost town in comparison to the previous bustling, determined, productive vessel of a mere twelve hours ago. Already she misses the continual nonverbal communications between herself and the person who was still inside her only hours ago. She never thought she'd miss the constant kicking and tumbling … but she does. Her body has gone suddenly silent. Tomorrow she will appreciate the solitude she's been craving since the baby became highly active, but right now she just feels lonely … until she remembers the sweetness of this morning. This reminds her that she is no longer alone. She has her partner, her mate; she has Booth.

.

.

Twelve hours ago, Brennan had stood in this exact spot in front of the mirror with Booth standing behind her, his long warm fingers curling over her shoulders as he worked her trapezii with his thumbs.

"Ahhhh. Ohhhh," she'd murmured in a self-indulgent hum that traveled from her throat down into her chest as it deepened in tone. "How is it that you always know exactly where and how to touch me?" She groaned appreciatively as she leaned back into his touch, a satisfied, closed-eyed smirk on her face.

Booth couldn't stop a burst of laughter from escaping in response to her comment.

Brennan opened one eye and captured his in the mirror. "You know what I meant," she chided him, allowing her lid to fall back over her eye.

"It's one of my super powers," he crooned into her ear, teasingly, breathing onto her neck just below her ear where he knew it drove her _absolutely _crazy. He felt her clench her jaw and noticed the beginnings of a lop-sided grin and knew he'd hit his mark. He chuckled and continued his digital massage; pleased to be able to do _something_ to ease the strain her entire body was under lately.

"I think it was your super powers that got me into my present condition, _Special Agent_ _baby daddy_," she snickered throatily with a grin as she opened her eyes and inched the silky tie of her bathrobe up, tucking it under the weight of her breasts where it held without complaint. She picked up her bottle of cocoa butter lotion and unscrewed the top.

Reaching his arms around her midsection, Booth pulled open the bottom two thirds of her bathrobe, letting the silky fabric fall to either side of her belly.

"Oh, how I love the morning routine," he said, with a lilt in his voice as she squirted a palm full of the soothing ointment into his hand for him to rub into her taut skin.

Brennan chuckled and leaned backward into his larger solid frame and twinkled at him in the mirror when he finally looked up into her eyes from his unceasingly fascinated examination of the proof of his virility.

"Woah!" Exclaimed Booth as a small hill rolled pointedly across Brennan's abdomen right underneath his fingers. "Hand or foot?" He asked as he pressed against where the miniature appendage disappeared into the taut roundness of the love of his life's belly.

"Um, that was fairly high in my thoracic cavity, nearly making contact with my sternum while traversing the costal cartilage of my 7th true rib and my 8th false rib," she said while poking at her own anatomy as she mentions each part. "Her cranium is now seated in my abdominopelvic cavity as she drops toward the birth canal, and her legs are tucked up to her chest with her knees in close proximity to her nose. At this point she's more apt to be squirming and rolling rather than kicking."

"Which means what, it's a foot?" Booth grinned excitedly.

"That's what I just said. We most likely just witnessed evidence of a heal traversing the upper edge of my uterine wall," she had said, chuckling in delight as they watched another tennis ball sized mound travel across her abdomen in response to Booth's poking and prodding.

"Whoa!" He laughed delightedly as a foot poked back right where Booth had been pushing against her belly. "It's a tentacle! We're having an alien," he chuckled, making screeching alien sounds as he pressed his fingers into her belly like twin spiders sliding across a patch of ice. "She wants out! Head for the hills, she's going to burst out of your chest!"

"You are such a child," she snorts, batting at his hands.

"She wants to meet her daddy!" Booth chuckled with pride and continued to rub his warm cocoa butter slick hands over the mound of his daughter's active body as she lay squirming in her protective maternal nest. "Where is that devilishly handsome father of mine, she's wondering."

"Ohhhhhh, it itches, it itches!" Brennan whimpered in consternation, pinching her eyebrows together and sucking in a frustrated breath. "Scratch, Booth, scratch, but gently," she pleadingly commanded, reaching for her tube of coconut cream and squirting a pile into her own hand. "Why don't they warn you how irritatingly these striae gravidarum can itch?" She groaned.

"Why can't you just call them stretch marks like a normal person?" Booth cajoles.

"Because I am not a normal person, Booth—"

"I know, you're _extraordinary_. I'm telling you, Bones, this girl wants out. Today could be the day," he sang, turning her around to kiss her on her forehead, then bending over and sinking his face into her pregnancy-augmented chest as he cupped her swollen bathrobe-covered breasts from the sides very gently. "Hooooo! I love the sheer … voluptuousness of this body. God bless the Titty Fairy!" He growled exuberantly, then jumped out of the way as she tried to hit him.

"You've been saying that every day for the last week," shouted Brennan over the din of the shower spray as Booth whipped off his boxers and hopped into the shower.. "I mean, the part about today being the day! And you are correct. The _Titty Fairy_ is a fabricated nymph created by men like you so you can speak freely about the increased adipose and lactiferous tissue of the female breast during pregnancy and while lactating. Breasts weren't created for your amusement-"

"Ho ho ho ... I beg to differ—and don't you ruin it for me, lady!"

"They are nutrition delivery devices for infants!"

"Not listening to the 132nd lecture on anatomy," he sings from the shower stall. "One of these days, I will be right about it being _the _day, Bones. It's inevitable!" He'd shouted back, his voice mottled by the water streaming over his face.

.

.

That was this morning. Tonight, the circus that was her pregnancy has advanced to the next location, all that's left are the announcement flyers hanging by one nail, twirling in the breeze as an empty popcorn bag floats away on a dusty breeze. This loneliness of the circus' absence makes her eyes sting, her chest tighten, and her jaw clench momentarily. _Damn those vacillating hormones,_ she chastises her own physiology. A tear drops anyway. She shakes her head as if shrugging these feelings off.

_I am a mother now,_ she asserts, smiling meekly through blurry eyes, hesitantly laying her hand on her significantly, yet not completely, deflated abdomen. _I am someone's … mother! I am, for one small human being, that which someone else was able to be for me for only a short time, less than half of my life. _She refers, of course, to her abbreviated relationship with her own mother, a relationship cut short when Brennan was fifteen years old.

_Today I became a significant piece of another person's history_, she thinks with awe and humility, chuckling ruefully, though two milliliters of saltwater slide over the apples of her cheeks. _Yes, that is who I am, but what of this body I don't recognize? What I see before me is not symmetrical, not as pleasing as I am accustomed—but isn't that irrelevant? Blast those hormones. And blast, you, Mother Flipping Nature. You are most certainly a bitch of the highest order, _she says into the mirror. She narrows her eyes as she turns to the left and right, surveying the current state of her corporal existence. _This is temporary, Temperance,_ she assures herself, regaining her usual equilibrium. _See? Just a hormonal shift, and nothing to be concerned about. Physical attractiveness __is__ irrelevant. Meaningless. Surely Booth is aware of that as well,_ she thinks, though not with her usual confidence—hormones being as befuddling as is their nature to be, even for the most astute of its victims.

.

.

Passing through the brightly lit bedroom into the hallway and quietly pushing the nursery door open, Brennan stands in the doorway, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dusky interior.

She is greeted by Booth's soft voice crooning to the baby she assumes is lying in the crib.

"_Hush little baby don't say a word,  
><em>_Papa's gonna buy you a mocking bird.  
><em>_If that mocking bird don't sing,  
><em>_Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring.  
><em>_If that diamond ring turns brass  
><em>_Papa's gonna buy you a looking glass."_

"Booth!" She rasps just above a whisper across the gray, "you do know those nursery rhymes are replete with frightening imagery and tragic psychosocial anachronisms to which no undeveloped hippocampus should be exposed! Listen to the words you're saying!" She takes a step toward him hesitantly.

"Hey, you told me her_ hippopot-o-moose_ isn't developed enough for her to recognize or remember words yet!"

"Oh, but—well—" He's right, and she knows it. She rolls her eyes.

"Bones, there's nothing wrong with a song about a father providing for his daughter, wanting to give her the world—" he challenges gently.

"It supports the values of entitlement and blatant consumerism, mindless waste, Booth! These are the seeds of tomfoolery to which global warming and the pillaging of the earth's non renewable resources are directly attributed!"

Booth stares at her blankly, grimacing, and patting his lumpy shoulder. He knows the most effective way to handle a situation like this with Brennan is to let her have her say, let her know he hears and understands her concerns, and to keep his mouth shut. Unless he can't help himself! Besides, he enjoys having these verbal skirmishes with her; it's part of who they are as a couple.

"It may be subtle in that particular lullaby, Booth," she continues, gaining volume and passion in her tone, "but surely you see the overt references to violence in the psycholinguistic stanzas of infanticide-centric poetry such as …

"_Rock-A-Bye baby in the treetop  
><em>_When the wind blows the cradle will rock.  
><em>_When the bow breaks the baby will fall  
><em>_And down will come baby, cradle and all."_

Booth continues to rock back and forth, patting his shoulder, but saying nothing. He wonders if there might be something else going on inside that beautiful head of hers. He is not the only one who has been consumed with concern for the future safety of their daughter. Neither new parent can help it. In their professional life, Booth and Brennan have seen what can lie beyond the bubble of parental protection. Brennan, for her part, carries the additional concern that she herself may be inexplicably plucked from the world, leaving her daughter to fend for herself in a world which neither would nor could love and care for Christine as she, Brennan, would most certainly do herself.

Brennan and Booth have discussed the statistical improbabilities of these tragedies being visited upon their progeny. They have prepared wills assuring a healthy, loving, affectionate life for Christine should anything happen to both of them. Booth and Brennan have agreed to take turns being irrational about their individual fears. However, they forgot to consult with Mother Nature and her cycle of post-birth hormone-induced neurosis.

"A baby falls out of a tree, Booth! An infant's minimally ossified skeletal system is much more flexible than even a two-year old's, however, a fall from a tree at virtually any height could be fatal nonetheless – especially if the child's body is then crushed by the toppling cradle which would inevitable follow it to the ground! And don't even get me started on Humpty Dumpty!"

"Now wait a second Bones—"

"Even you, with your limit experience deconstructing the literary symbolism of an eggshell—"

"Well, I do know that 'Ring around the Rosie' is about the Black Death, or cholera or something, that a bunch of people died from years ago. The posies are supposed to be flowers people wore around their necks to cover the stench of rotting corpses because so many died they couldn't bury them fast enough. The ashes probably have something to do with mass cremations, I'm guessing."

"Actually, there is no credible evidence to support that particular hypothesis about the origin and hidden meanings of 'Ring Around the Rosie'. There is no record of its verses anywhere in literary antiquity from the fourteenth century when the Black Death occurred, or even the seventeenth century when the Great Plague of London occurred," Brennan explains in a forthright academic tone.

"Eyes glossing over here, Bones," mumbles Booth.

"Additionally, cremation is a relatively new development in Western Europe. It is more plausible that this particular rhyme was simply part of a dancing game—though, there has been conjecture that it may have been a sort of defiant gesture against the Protestant ban on dancing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."

"Nothing is simple with you, is it?" Booth groans, sighing incredulously. "So, what's wrong with, 'there was an old woman who lived in a shoe—"

"That's blatant lack of self-control—"

"Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick?"

"A toddler burning his testicles? Surely I don't have to—"

"Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle—"

"Platters and kitchen utensils are certainly not sentient and therefore cannot run off together," she snorts, giving him the stink eye. "And isn't 'diddle' urban slang for sexual intercourse?"

"It was a dish and he ran away with a spoon, and you can't blame the guy for falling for her curves. I heard that spoon had some awesome curves! What about Jack and Jill going up the hill?"

"Booth, the boy falls down the hill inflicting blunt force trauma to his cranium and fracturing the transverse processes of his C1 vertebrae. And then," she continues, thrusting a hand onto her hip, "Then, Jill sees what he's and, rather than learning from his mistake, throws herself down the hill after him, reinforcing the erroneous supposition that females take all of their queues from males and have no purpose in life once that male is eliminated. Pure, unadulterated rubbish, Booth!"

"Okay—Jack sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean—"

"Horrendous dietary choices!"

"Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie—"

"Doesn't one of those birds peck out the king's eye?"

"What about, 'She wore an itsy bitsy teeny weensy yellow polka dot bikini—"

"Wha—is that even a poem? I've never heard that one," she says, narrowing her eyes to mere slits. "You made that up, didn't you?"

"No – it was actually turned into a song," he insists trying to keep a straight face. "What about little Miss Muffet—never mind, that one's obvious," he says, chewing on the inside of his bottom lip and thinking for a moment. "Next thing I know you'll be criticizing Dr. Seuss. _Mr. Brown can Moo, Can You? Green Eggs and Ham, Fox on Sox, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. _He made cats and fish and imaginary characters talk to each other!"

"Theodor Seuss Geisel was a genius with an IQ just ten points below my own. He used rhyming and trysyllabic meter to teach children the joy of reading," she says pretentiously. "I find his anomalous characters to be an appropriate use of creative freedom. Where's the baby?" Chokes Brennan without skipping a beat as she moves forward and leans over the crib.

"She's right here," Booth whispers, patting his shoulder once again.

For a moment Brennan thinks Booth is either teasing her or is suffering from a delusion, as she sees no baby on his shoulder. Stepping closer, she realizes what she's actually looking at and gasps, her hands flying to her mouth in surprise and awe.

Sitting in the rocker-glider is Booth in his bathrobe, the sides not fully pulled together across his chest. As if on queue, Booth's shoulder comes to life under his bathrobe and emits a squeak as a tiny pale appendage aimlessly reaches forward and eventually rests against Booth's pectoralis major.

"Here she is," he says, pulling enough of his robe to the side to reveal a small soft head. He leans his head away so he can focus on Christine's face while taking the tiny hand between his thumb and index finger. Next to his hand, Christine's little arm and fingers look like that of a baby doll.

"Oh, Booth!" Brennan sighs as her heart jumps, her previous concerns dissolving in delight. "This is the Koala care you told me about?" She asks in a high-pitched whisper.

Booth nods, shooting a satisfied toothy grin at her. "She awoke and wanted you. She was bobbing her little head around looking for her mommy. I knew you'd be here any minute, so I improvised. See, the skin on skin it calms her, slows her heart rate. She's a squirmy one, Bones, but she quieted down as soon as I tucked her inside my bathrobe."

"Ohhhhh," She croons with a lilt in her voice. "Booth, you are such a natural nurturer. That was lightening quick thinking." She falls silent, her heart skipping a beat as she enjoys the image of the man she loves rocking their baby against his bare chest. "Awwwww," she sighs again.

"I think she recognizes your voice," he whispers when Christine stirs.

"Of course she does," says Brennan in a higher octave than her usual one. "She's been listening to me for months now. She knows your voice too. Your singing probably helped her calm down."

"I think she's hungry," he says, leaning forward, cradling her head in one hand, her tiny diapered butt in the other.

Their hands rub against each other's during the exchange as Brennan takes Christine from Booth's outstretched arms. As if choreographed, Booth and Brennan look up from the baby at the same time, his hands over hers as together they hold Christine between them. They smile into each other's eyes, both of them overwhelmed with emotion. Neither can find the words to say at first.

"I love you, Temperance Brennan," whispers Booth, leaning over Christine to kiss Brennan tenderly on the lips. Brennan leans into his kiss, and sighs, leaning her forehead against his when their lips separate, slowly, with the delicate sound of a thousand kisses to come. She stares into the big eye in the middle of his forehead and smiles meekly.

"When you hold Christine, your system is flooded with Oxytocin, the love hormone, Booth. One could attribute your declaration of love directly to that. However, I have seen more proof of your love for me than I can recount, so I am choosing to take your admission at face value. I hope that you will do the same when I tell you that I am happier than I have ever been in my life, with the exception of when I am plagued by hormonal fluctuations—"

Booth stops her with another kiss, which she welcomes without hesitation, closing her eyes. "Just say you love me," he says against her lips.

"Mmmmm, I do," she whispers back swiping her tongue across his lips for another kiss. "I very _much_ do," she says as she sighs. "But, right now, I have a hungry baby on my hands, literally."

"Right," says Booth completing the transfer of Christine into Brennan's arms and stepping away.

Brennan brings Christine to her face, and kisses her on the cheek. "I should probably change her first, and dress her," she says, but it sounds like a question.

"Probably, otherwise she'll be cold if she moves around too much when you lie her down to sleep. You'll need something to drink if you are going to be feeding her. I'll get you a glass of water," he says, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall to take a mental picture and file it in long-term memory.

"Does this mean you read that breastfeeding book I gave you?" Brennan gasps in surprise, her eyes as big as silver dollars as she chooses a sleeper and dresses Christine.

"Of course I did. It was the most exciting read since your last novel," he chuckles, rolling his eyes. He'd skimmed it just yesterday, skipping over the diagrams, of course. "And by the way, bringing that up in front of Hacker the other day? Not cool," he smirks, giving her an admonishing eyebrow raise.

Brennan doesn't respond. She's focusing on getting Christine latched on for her feeding.

Booth stands in front of Brennan, his hands on his hips, forgetting himself, entranced by the vision before him. Watching Brennan situate herself and the swaddled baby across her chest, he marvels at how the two are figuring out how to manage the whole breastfeeding thing already.

.

.

As he watches Brennan handling Christine, he packs a knapsack and heads off to Planet Booth in his imagination. He dials back his mind to memories of when he first saw Brennan. She was standing on a stage at American University, lecturing about de-fleshing techniques to an auditorium full of anthropology students. She was so self-possessed, put together, stunning, really, and brilliant and strong.

And now, here she is, Dr. Temperance Brennan, world renowned forensic anthropologist, New York Times Best Selling Author, genius millionaire, and the most beautiful woman he's ever seen or held in his arms—and she's sitting in their home, in a rocker-glider he bought for her, with his child at her breast.

_Wow,_ he thinks, _wow._ For a moment he's stunned by his blessings and can't move as a warm wave starting at the base of his neck moves across his shoulders and down his back. _How did this happen?_ He asks himself. He was certain he didn't deserve it, but God let him have it anyway. Like many times before, it takes his breath away and increases the speed of the blood flowing through his veins until he's certain he can feel it pounding in his earlobes. He has to take an occasional gulp of air to make sure he keeps breathing. He almost falls over as he steps back to lean against the wall behind him.

In his experience love comes bearing a dove in one hand and a sledgehammer in the other. Relationships are fragile. Things can change in an instant, and the love can fly away, or be shattered. That's what happened with his own mother; there one moment, gone the next. His grandmother, Pops' wife; there one week, gone several later. Tessa, scared off by commitment. A flash fire dream of a family with Rebecca appeared in his consciousness over a pregnancy test one moment; gone the next. Hannah. The list goes on.

But Brennan is different. Even when she left, she wasn't really gone. She'd taken him with her in her heart. He knows that now, though it took over a year for her to tell him that. She's more tender than fragile now. More strong, than impervious. She's always been steady, forthright, determined and generous, self-sacrificing, committed. Or is she? He can't help but have a small twinge of anxiety over their marital status. He knows in his head that they are together. It looks like they will always be together. They are bound now by this child they share. So, why does he still fear she may suddenly disappear? Marriage doesn't guarantee anything, there's plenty of proof of that.

The words of an old song come to mind as Booth allows himself to indulge in a recurring fear.

_"How do you keep the music playing? How do you make it last? __  
><em>_How do you keep the song from fading too fast?_

_How do you lose yourself to someone and never lose your way?__  
><em>_How do you not run out of new things to say?"__  
><em>

This, what he and Brennan have, is miles better than anything he ever imagined. But what if he's wrong? What if by the worst stroke of luck in human history, something goes terribly wrong and this ends up just like all the others: broken, with him in a pile on the floor with his heart crushed once again?

_"I know the way I feel for you is now or never.  
><em>_The more I love, the more that I'm afraid that in your eyes I may not see forever."_

Without that commitment, no one has an obligation to stay once the magic fades and ordinary life settles in, at least, that's how Booth sees it. He want's that obligation. If he can't get it, will he still be able to keep their relationship together?

_"If we can be the best of lovers, yet be the best of friends__  
><em>_If we can try with every day to make it better as it grows __  
><em>_With any luck than I suppose the music never ends."_

So how does he keep this one together? How does he protect it? How does he live inside the possibility that he has no control over the future of something so devastatingly precious to him?

_This is where faith comes in, _he imagines the Holy Spirit breathing into his ear. _You have to let go, Seeley Joseph. You can have faith, or you can have fear, but not both. When you feel that fear, talk to me. I will get you through it. I know what I'm doing. I'm never wrong, and my timing is perfect._

_I know,_ Booth says to the voice of the Lord in his head. _I keep forgetting. Help me not to forget, HS. _He calls the Holy Spirit HS for short.

_I will put the words in your mouth. I will bless you give you grace. I have a plan for you and the mother of your child. Good plans. _

_Why can't I relax?_

_You've been hurt before. It's normal to be anxious. Remember the words of my prayer?_

_Our Father who art in heaven?_

_After that. Remember the phrase, 'Grant us peace in our day. In Your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety.' I can do that, Seeley. But you have to let Me._

_I'll try, Lord._

_I know you will. Try harder._

Booth smiles sheepishly up at the Holy Spirit who slowly fades into the background as Booth becomes aware that Brennan is staring at him.

.

.

"You're doing it again," murmurs Brennan dreamily in a throaty whisper across the five feet of dim nursery air that separates them.

"What?" He says absently, climbing out of his reverie.

"Pulling your hair." She's noticed he does this sometimes, pulls the tiny hairs on his neck right behind his ear when he thinks she's not looking. He does this in the same way some people pinch themselves to be assured they aren't dreaming.

"Oh," he says, rubbing the back of his neck and dropping his hands to his sides.

"I know that look. You are concerned about something."

"Well," he sighs, exhaling through his nose with finality. He feels a little self-conscious suddenly. "What's that saying about putting all your eggs in one basket?"

"Hm?" she blinks slowly, the oxytocin being released from her pituitary gland in spurts as Christine suckles at her breast. "I don't know what that means, but that is a foolish proposition," she says, shaking her head and furrowing her brow. "It's much safer to carry your eggs in an egg carton. But, if you must use a basket, don't put them all in one just in case you drop it and crack all of the eggs."

"I know. Irrational, right?" He says, reflecting, sighing.

"Completely irrational," she agrees, looking down at Christine and smiling. "Just like us," she says, with a dreamy lop-sided grin for her mate who stands before her looking stunned.

"You two are the most beautiful—you're just—I can't even explain it," he says, almost beseechingly, after a long moment, bending his knees and sliding down the wall to sit on the floor, then resting his elbows on his knees. He cocks his head to the left and smiles sheepishly up at her, sighing. He shakes his head and shrugs, feeling a little choked up suddenly. "Wow," he manages in a horse whisper, trying to chuckle, but it comes out sounding forced.

She smiles affectionately back at him with a knowing glance and continues to rock back and forth. "You can't believe your luck," she says after a moment. It's a statement, not a question, her voice a caress against the side of his face.

Booth smiles up at her. "Hm," he grunts, saying nothing else. The look he gives her is his_ you know me so well_ look. His heart is in his mouth, it feels so good to be known this well by her.

.

.

Booth contemplatively retreats to Planet Booth once again.

He's put a whole boatload of his eggs in this relationship basket, he thinks. A whole flotilla, actually. He has this notion, though, that if he doesn't speak how much he's in for, what's at stake, maybe what he has on the table won't be as vulnerable somehow. But if he lets it out, if he calls it by name … all bets just might be off … and something he won't be able to control might happen. Like what? What could possibly happen? He doesn't know; that's just it. And it pours a shock of icy adrenaline in a sheet down his back.

Sometimes when this happens he wants to get away. Go have a moment to himself, as if unceasing focus could prevent anything frightening from happening. Sometimes he wants to crush her to his chest and not let her go. As long as she's there in his arms, he can protect her, he can save her … from everything … even from himself, as irrational as he knows that sounds.

.

.

Brennan sees that look on Booth's face when he doesn't say anything more. She feels the stillness of the air surrounding him and knows he's gone back to that place he won't tell her about; the place that holds something so terrible she doesn't even ask about, because she knows he won't tell her.

She's read a book Sweets had given her when she was trying to understand Booth's post-Hannah stupor. The book was about what it called the_ male culture_. The title made it sound like it was an anthropological work, which is why she agreed to read it in the first place. Begrudgingly, she had to admit to Sweets later that once she started reading, she couldn't put it down.

The book consisted of a series of anecdotal essays and psychological studies on the subject of how men view themselves. It explained how men are constantly measuring themselves against their own impossible ideal of what it means to be a man. The mode by which a man constructs his ideal is rather simple: he observes other males, predominantly his own father and his father's peers. However, how a male interacts with and measures himself against his ideal varies depending upon the man, his self-awareness as well as his self-actualization as he matures, and the self he sees reflected back to him in the verbal and non-verbal queues of the females he interacts with. She found that last part quite fascinating. If it were not for that tidbit, and the article about the effect of testosterone on the synapses and neurology of the male brain, she would have dismissed the entire anthology as simply fascinating conjecture. The science behind it, however, anchored the concepts in her brain and forced her to test some of the theories with Booth.

Surprisingly, she found that the book's premises held merit, at least where Booth, was concerned. The book spoke at length about men's thought processes; the significant role their concerns and fears played in their choices and how those drove their behavior. One theory that she found particularly fascinating, and made a great difference for her with Booth, was about the sharing of fears between a man and his life partner.

Where women, in general, have a need to discuss their greatest fears; men, in general, have some fears that they keep to themselves in protection of the ones they love and have sworn, to God and country or just themselves, to protect. Out of a discussion about these kinds of fears came Booth's encouragement that Brennan talk to her father.

"Do you have fears that you don't tell me about?" She'd asked, pointedly.

He considered her for a moment before responding, wiping his mouth with his napkin, pushing his plate aside, and crossing his arms and leaning his elbows on the table in front of him.

"Every man has fears," he said, noncommittally, staring straight into her eyes as everything else in the café dropped away and he wondered where this conversation might be going.

"If I asked you," she began, returning the same level of focus with her own gaze, "Would you tell me what they were?" She asked, inconspicuously holding her breath.

Booth leaned back in his chair, glanced out the window for a moment before responding, then said, levelly, "Probably not." He had clenched his jaw, hoping she wouldn't pursue it further.

She stared at him, studying his demeanor, his tone, the lines around his eyes, the pace of his breathing. "Why not?" She asked gently. It seemed like an appropriate question, given how interdependent they were, how close they'd become in every single way possible.

He pursed his lips and blew out his cheeks as he exhaled, then said, "Because I love you. Because your knowing will not make the fears disappear. Because I will probably always carry them around with me. And, because I just won't," he said. "End of story." He watched her eyes intently until he knew she had accepted his answer as valid.

She pursed her lips, then slowly nodded at him. "Fair enough," she said, her research confirmed. She was fairly certain she knew his fears centered around an inability to protect her anyway. She never asked again.

He knew she was simply trying to understand him. He appreciated that, but there are some things he couldn't tell her, didn't want to tell her. That was when he recommended she ask Max about what had been bothering her ever since she'd reconnected with her father. She'd been struggling with forgiving her father for her mother's death.

"But, why talk to Dad?" She'd asked, quizzically.

"Because," Booth had said. "Because his worst fears have been realized and are behind him, for the most part. He may be more forthcoming than someone … at my stage of life who still has a lot to lose, a lot of worrying to do."

.

.

"Are there things you never told mom?" She met Max in the park one afternoon later that week. He bought a bag of breadcrumbs to feed the birds and they sat on a sunny bench around the perimeter of the grassy mall.

"Sure," he'd said, not looking at her.

"Really?"

He'd grimaced and nodded. Then looked up, squinting. "Why do you ask?"

"I've been reading this book," she said, squinting up at him. "Why didn't you tell her?"

"There are some things she didn't need to worry about, Tempe." He found it interesting that she didn't ask what those things were, only why he hadn't shared them with his wife. However, he'd figured out long ago just to go wherever Brennan lead him. Figuring her out was like trying to work a six by six Rubix cube. It couldn't be done. At least, not by him. And that was fine. He was there to be whatever she needed him to be. If this was where she needed to go today, then he'd let her lead and he'd trip along behind her.

"Didn't she have a right to know?"

He'd leaned his head side to side as if weighing his answer before delivering it. "No. Maybe. Look, it was my job to know them. Protect her from them. She shouldn't have had to worry about them. What good would it do?"

"She could have helped protect …"

"That was my job, Sweetie."

"She ended up dead," Brennan said without hesitation, never one to mince words.

He stared at her softly, swallowed hard, and looked down at the ground suddenly very interested in the pattern being made by a line of ants crawling through the sand in a crack of the sidewalk. He raised his eyebrows in resignation, exhaled in a loud sigh as his shoulders slumped, then leaned back against the bench rest and emptied the rest of his bag of bread crumbs onto the ground for the birds.

"There was nothing either of us could have done about that, Tempe," he said, soberly. "Fears wouldn't exist if there weren't a sliver of a chance that they could come true. Her worrying about it wouldn't have improved the quality of her life … or the length of it. It would have just … made matters worse, made her miserable, ruined our time together – which I wanted to be joyful. That was a tall order, having left our reasons for living behind," he'd said, stealing a glance at her. "It was my job to protect her, Tempe. I failed," he said, shrugging, the side of his mouth turning up in regret as he looked up into the trees.

She watched him intently and knew in her blood that he was being honest, and that his honesty could potentially cost him something that was very important to him. After a long moment, she said, "You did the best you could do, Dad."

He looked down, crumbling the paper bag in his fist and glanced over at her briefly.

"I don't know, Tempe. I ask myself that question every day…" he chagrined, putting his arm around her and squeezing her sideways.

"No one could have done any better," she offered. She was uncertain if she was telling the truth, but willing, determined, to give him this pardoning morsel for what Booth insisted Max considered his one truly unforgivable sin, not having been able to protect her mother. It had been a turning point in their relationship, this conversation.

After meeting with her father, she'd gone to Booth's apartment where he was preparing dinner for the two of them. She found him standing at the island in front of a cutting board and a pile of thinly sliced red onions for their salad. When he'd heard her closing the door, he'd toweled off his hands and planted them on the counter top to either side of the cutting board, bracing himself in case her meeting with her father had ended badly, and waited for her to come into the kitchen. She stood in the door frame, and glanced at him solemnly for a moment, silent. Walking toward him, she'd taken his hand, lead him to the bedroom, undressed him and wordlessly made love to him like it was going to be the last time. When she lay on top of him, motionless, afterward, he asked quietly, "How did it go?"

"I wish you could have seen his face. I think I understand. About those fears, and why you won't tell me," was all she said against his neck, rolling off of him onto the mattress. He turned toward her onto his side and folded her into his arms as they both exhaled. "If you ever change your mind—" She hadn't needed to finish the sentence because he knew what she meant.

For the next hour, he held her in appreciation for the gift he knew she'd given Max by assuring him he'd done the best he could. She gave him the gift of acceptance, a pardon for having done his best and still failed; a pardon for being human. Booth knew he would never receive a pardon from all the wives and children of the men whose lives he'd taken in the name of duty and in protection of others, so he accepted it from her by proxy and fell more in love with her than was probably safe, though he didn't care anymore. Because he was already all in, way over his head, and that's how he wanted it. Even if it came with fear on its heals.

Ever since then, the scent of red onions have smelled like redemption to her.

.

.

Coming back to the nursery from his second trip to Planet Booth, he looks up to see Brennan's head leaning against the back of the rocker, her eyes closed. He quietly stands and leaves the room

Returning with a glass of cool water, Booth notices Brennan has switched Christine over to the other side. This means she's half way through the feeding and will be able to follow him to bed soon. He's looking forward to laying next to each other in the dark and talking about the incredible day they just had, probably the most momentous of their lives to date.

"Bones, do you want me to leave? Do you want some privacy?" He asks her quietly as he hands her the glass. He has nothing to do but stand in front of her as she rocks and feeds their infant.

"No," she says so quietly that he can't hear her, but he sees her lips moving. She drains the glass and hands it back to him. "Don't leave."

"I can't believe I delivered a baby," he muses, incredulous after a moment. "Not may people can say that!" He sits down next to the gliding rocker while mother and baby will soon slide into an oxytocin stupor.

"Uh, about 77% of the adult female population have given birth, actually, Booth," Brennan replies, looking up at him and smiling peacefully, then returning her attention back to the newborn at her breast.

"Well, of course, Bones, but how many people can say they were the one with the catcher's mitt watching the whole deal and cutting the cord … laying the newly born miracle on the mother's chest? Huh?" When he claps once and rubs his hands together, the baby starts, then settles back down into the warmth provided by her mother's body.

"Booth, not so loud," admonishes Brennan quietly, glancing at him briefly. "Look at her, she just goes right back to breastfeeding. That is encouraging, because you have a noisy father," she chuckles, running her index finger gently from the baby's forehead down to the tip of her nose. "Yes, you do! You have a very noisy father, little girl."

"Hi. I'm Seeley Booth, _I've_ delivered a baby," says Booth, still marveling at the events of the day. Suddenly, he begins as if he's speaking with a new acquaintance at a cocktail party. "How many babies have you delivered? None? Sorry to hear that. I've never actually had a baby, of course, not all by myself. My, uh—wi—well, Bones was the one who was pregnant. Well, I got her pregnant. Well it was a group effort … but—"

"You are way to puritanical to ever have that conversation, Booth," she chides him. "You will have to settle for gloating in private." Brennan rolls her eyes and chuckles at her partner for life. _He needs some sleep,_ she thinks to herself. I'm clearly not the only one here who has fallen victim to my own body's chemistry-induced delusions.

"Booth, you are being nonsensical. You are most likely experiencing the retreat of extraordinarily high levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline after such a prolonged rush. How long were we in that barn anyway?"

He tells her. Her brows raise, the corners of her mouth turning down, her eyebrows rising at this news. She nods, not much surprised, now that she hears the truth of it. During the birth she had no concept of time. She simply focused on the waves of information bouncing between her brain and the rest of her body as it convulsed and relaxed, convulsed and relaxed, leading her through the natural birthing process. She was grateful for the fresh evening air, and for the arms, chest, knees, and voice that kept her anchored in place so she could do what she was made to do. Booth, alone, is what got her through the hours of her first birthing experience.

_He deserves his moment in the sunshine,_ she tells herself. If she couldn't have her doula there, Booth is the one person she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she could trust to see her through safely and calmly, despite his obvious and, at times, obnoxious, mounting agitation these last two months. As the birth date grew near, Booth had had difficulty sleeping. He rarely ate a meal without jumping up to get her something – a napkin, a glass of milk, a sweater – whether she needed it or not. He couldn't do enough to make sure she was comfortable. At times she found this frustrating and confining, but . . . she reminded herself that his protectiveness of her was a trait in him that she appreciated more than almost all others.

She felt a twang of guilt that they hadn't made it to the hospital, for Booth's sake. What if something had gone wrong? He would never have forgiven himself. But nothing did go wrong. She had even gone so far as to assure the setting of their birth was perfect, a distinction Temperance Brennan rarely if _ever_ used.

In all honestly, she wouldn't have it any other way. Just the two of them, surrounded by the scents and sounds of nature in the twilight glow of an early fall evening. They had been the only ones present when Christine was conceived. That they were the only ones present at her birth held a pleasing symmetry for Brennan. She hadn't doubted, even for a moment, Booth's ability to handle this birth, despite his obvious misgivings.

You did a wonderful job. It was like you'd done it before, Booth," she says into the comfortable silence between them. "Were you there for Parker's birth?" She asked, looking up at his proud face.

"No – I was in the waiting room. Rebecca—"

"Well, I find I am quite impressed with your doula skills," she says, unable to stop herself from grinning up at him peacefully as she rocks herself slowly back and forth.

"I never thought I'd say this," says Booth, his voice a gentle breath filled with renewed wonder, "but now I'm glad they showed us that 'birthing movie' half way through one of our prenatal yogi beara—"

"Yoga Nidra."

"Yeah, those classes," he says. While watching the graphic video of a live birth from the suicide seats, he'd mused that no matter how many dismembered and mutilated bodies he'd seen, nothing compared to seeing a live person's body open up and expel what looked like part of their own guts. He was baffled about how pregnant women could get past the prospect of being that kind of physical pain and contortion. _Childbirth is not for the weak_, he'd mused at the time, _which is why women are the ones who have to do it. _

"I wasn't grossed out at all!" Booth says, surprised as he sits next to the rocking couple, then shooting Brennan a nervous apologetic grin. Once his words are hanging in the air, it occurs to him that Brennan, or any woman, might find his comment offensive. Unfortunately, he couldn't think of a single way to recover from the faux pas.

"I was concerned you might be," Brennan says encouragingly, saving him from himself. She knows his comment was innocent, not intended to offend. "I know how you feel about the wet work aspect sometimes involved in the beginning of our cases. But you didn't disappoint me, Booth," she says, her voice falling, velvety, like a caress to the side of his face again. "Could you move the stool over here so I can put my feet up, Booth, and would you mind rocking us a bit? My feet are still quite swollen—" Brennan smiles placidly up at her partner.

"Sure," assents Booth, placing a hand on the blond wood slat of the rocker just above Brennan's shoulder. "To be honest, Bones, I had a moment of panic as I was looking for a spot for you to hunker down—and then when I couldn't get any cell signal—and I couldn't leave you to ask that asshat wine guy to call an ambulance—"

"It didn't show at all," she says, quietly. "Booth—you just—took over, calmly, methodically. It was amazing." She beams at him, her eyes soft and glassy, proud, appreciative.

He smiles back at her, humbly. "All of a sudden, something inside me just—kicked-in. It became all about you and how you were feeling and that we were about to experience a miracle together." Booth looks into Brennan's calm, happy beautiful blue eyes with his wild, excited sultry brown ones, and continues. "Then I actually felt, like, a rush of—excitement, you know-?" He says, clutching his chest.

They were both silent for a moment, fully present to the sheer magnitude of what had happened today. It was almost to surreal to comprehend. It would take several days before Booth could get his head around the fact that he'd delivered his daughter into the world without medical assistance—and that nothing had gone wrong. When it finally would hit him, he would drop to his knees and say several fervent prayers of gratitude that Brennan was so healthy and strong; and that they weren't met with complications of any sort. When he'd said earlier this afternoon that he'd die if any harm came to Brennan and the baby, he had meant it.

"God!" Booth exclaims, shaking his head after several minutes of silent contemplation. The only sounds in the room are the gentle swooshes of the rocker as Booth slowly pushed it back and forth, and the tiny squeaks and mewls emanating occasionally from the bundle of receiving blankets swaddled at Brennan's breast.

Booth took a mental picture of his two girls, mother and daughter, sharing their first ride in the glider rocker he'd bought as a surprise for Brennan when they learned the one she really wanted was no longer being manufactured. He'd made her cover her eyes as he lead her into the room to find the chair wrapped in a big yellow bow sitting between the cradle and the crib. She's been so pleased and hormonal that she burst into tears the moment she saw it. It was a major coup. Now, whenever he sees her sitting in it, it gives him a little tickle of warm satisfaction.

"Booth?"

"Hm?"

"I'm glad you talked me into going to the hospital on the way home."

"I couldn't believe how easily you gave in. You crumpled like a napkin!" He chuckled, grateful for her lack of resistance. "That whole birthing thing—that looked like it hurt, I mean—Ooooow-." The sound he's making rhymes with _moo,_ as in the sound a cow makes. "Eoowh—I mean that—_really_—looked painful," he chuffs, wincing sympathetically.

She cocks an eyebrow at him and an expression that is either mounting disapproval, confusion, or, maybe she's simply got gas, he really can't tell. _Oh, you idiot! _He chastises himself, _She doesn't want to talk to you about her private parts! And—I—. _His shoulders sink._ Maybe I'll just go unload the dishwasher, or get her another glass of water, or-. _He mentally hangs his head in shame._ No, _he tells himself, rallying. _I can handle this. I'm just being a considerate spouse, I mean, partner. And this is what caring partners do; they look out for each other. Stand your ground, Seeley,_ he tells himself. _Force the blood back into your capillaries. Act like this is no big deal. When a man has a—a—partner, these lady things become part of his life, right? _He inhales forcefully, his nostrils flaring. He exhales, trying not to do it too loudly. He goes for strike three.

"I'm just trying to—do the right thing here, Bones, you know, look after my patient," he says, hoping his grin masks his regret at having fallen into this rabbit hole from which he can see no delicate way to extricate himself.

"The vulva and birth canal are made of extremely expandable tissues to accommodate the passing of a newborn cranium which averages 10-11 centimeters. Also, the pituitary gland excretes very high doses of hormones which provide a sense of euphoria, much like that of heroine, and diminish the pain reception from those tissues."

Booth's forehead has fallen into his hand. He's trying no to picture what she's describing. "Hooooly buckets," he sighs.

She chuckles. "I'll be fine, Booth," she chuckles. "Female bodies are made to deliver babies."

"Yeah, but—11 centimeters?"

"An infant's head cranium has floating plates that can shift, or not exactly collapse, but the infant cranium in utero is in pieces so it has more give than an older person's does. The not yet fully ossified plates can overlap to make it through the birth canal."

"Really?

"Yeah. As a person grows those plates ossify."

"Huh. Our bodies are miracles," he says, wonder in his tone and his expression.

"We are biological success stories of evolution, survival of the—"

"I know, the fittest—"

"Not always the fittest – sometimes it's survival of the most adaptable."

"Hm."

"Sometimes it doesn't work –natural childbirth, I mean. Sometimes the baby is still too big or the mother is too small."

"Really? Is that why they get the seesaw sexton?"

"It's called a C-Section, short for Cesarean section, meaning they cut through the epidermis, muscles, uterine wall—"

Booth swallows and shakes his head, his eyes jammed shut. "Ehh. Of a live person, right?"

"Of course. Though sometimes a Cesarean Section isn't possible. And sometimes a woman's perineum—"

"Perinium. I thought that was a flower thing."

"No, I think you are thinking – perennial … that means a plant that will grow for more than two seasons. The perineum is a part of the body that can tear during childbirth."

"Oh!" He says, squeezes shut further, the muscles in his throat pulled into two long vertical cords as he tries to flush the image out of his mind. He blows out a lungful of air like he's whistling, but there's no tweet escaping – just an column of air followed by a quick tongue being stuck out, then a grimace. "Fuzzy bunnies. God. I think—I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth_,_" he gasps. "But, come on," says Booth, in a dubious tone, "I don't care who you are, that's just_ gotta_ hurt!"

"Of course, it hurt like hell," she admits, finally. "But now, it feels kinda—just warm. But really, its nothing—in comparison to the actual birth—and look what we have now," she says, bending at the neck to kiss the crown of the baby at her breast.

After several moments of both parents gazing at Christine Angela's perfect little face, mesmerized by the rhythm of her little undulating cheek, Christine detaches and yawns, her unconscious corneas traveling across the tiny slit of her barely opened eyes. Then, like a baby bird, she gropes with her mouth like a baby bird seeking to regain purchase of her food source. Booth and Brennan are both transfixed by this tiny person created by their love for each other. Half Brennan and half Booth. A miracle.

Brennan tears her eyes away from Christine and smiles up into Booth's eyes, holding his gaze as she reaches over to take his hand. For a moment they sit, she in the rocker, him by her side, saying with their eyes more than words could express, though they seem to be saying, we did this together. We made a family. Our family.

"I know how a baby develops … as much as I possibly can … from a biological standpoint, but so much of what happens inside the womb, remains a mystery even to the brightest minds in the field of cellular biology," she says, her voice filled with wonder. She spent the first month of her pregnancy reading everything she could get her hands on about the multiplication and polarization of cells from a small collection of cells to the perfectly organized collection we recognize as the human form.

"The timing, the exact sequence, every bit is extraordinary," she continues, pausing between sentences, to look down at Christine, and then back up at Booth and smiling. "I find it comforting to know that though we do not know every detail about how to construct a human life form, our bodies possess this knowledge and do it for us."

Over the last nine months she has learned that there are so many things that life has been teaching her, about herself, about being in a relationship with a person who loves her beyond measure, about Booth. She's come to accept that much of this she never would have been able to do on her own. She finds this reassuring rather than disturbing, freeing rather than confining … this truth itself a welcome surprise.

"Can you believe we made this little person?" Booth asks abruptly. "She is the most beautiful and perfect little thing I have ever seen…"

"Booth?" Brennan says quietly, watching him adoringly stare at their baby.

"Hm?" He looks up and smiles lightly.

"I'm proud of you. You delivered our baby."

"Me? I'm proud of you – you did all the work! I just sat there and caught her when you pushed her out."

"You did a lot more than that. It was kind of a blur to me, but I remember you encouraging me – you helped me more than you realize. You were quite wonderful. I focused on your voice and just—holding on."

"I'll say! You had a grip on my arm like – whew!" He says, rubbing his right bicep where she'd had a white-knuckle grip on him for a large part of the time.

"It grounded me, holding onto you. I felt I might not be able to make it through otherwise. I'd have a baby with you any day, Booth," she says, reassuringly. "Not_ any_ day and not too soon. But you were just …"

"I get it," he says emotionally, his heart pounding out a tattoo inside his chest as he smiles into her eyes. _There it is, _he thinks. _She's not going anywhere. We are a family. And will be, God willing, for thirty or forty or fifty years to come._ He leans over and presses his lips firmly to hers for a long moment as he says a quick prayer to the Holy Spirit for giving him this woman. "Thanks for telling me that, Bones. You know they say birth is the closest humans come assisting God in the act of creation?"

"Booth, this baby was going to grow and be born with or without God performing a miracle. But I think I know what you mean."

"Wow, you're gonna stop there? Now_ that's_ a miracle," he snorts.

"Okay—humans birth tiny humans just like cows birth calves and cats birth kittens. Are those all miracles too?

"Certainly, all life is a miracle … even a blade of grass is a miracle, Bones," he says smugly. "That it happens at all is a miracle. God created the world and everything in it."

"Even if the things in the world don't believe in an all powerful God?"

"How do we know they don't believe in God?" He insists in a mock condescending tone.

She looks at him, her chin almost touching her chest, one eyebrow cocked. "Really, Booth?" She asks in a snarky tone.

"Has anyone ever asked one? Huh?" He counters. "It's not disprovable. Scientific theory, Bones – ha! You taught me that. If it cannot be disproven, it cannot be discounted!"

Brennan stares at him for a long moment.

"I concede your point," she says, reluctantly. "No one has been able to ask them. Their brains are too small to communicate what philosophy they ascribe to – animals, I mean. I won't even consider the faith of a blade of grass. And stop – I don't want to hear about the faith of a mustard seed again," she spurts, giving him the 'talk to the hand' gesture.

"Fine."

"Good," she says, rolling her eyes.

"Who won? What's the score now?" He asks. They've been pretending to keep track of who wins their arguments lately.

"I—who cares?" she says, shaking her head slowly.

"You are definitely high, lady," he chuckles in awe. It's not like her to back away from determining who gets the point.

"Oxytocin. Dopamine," she drawls with a goofy half grin.

"Where can I get a bottle of that?" He chuffs. "You better be careful eating what I make for you—I just might spike your Wheaties." He pulls on his invisible beard as if plotting a scheme.

"I don't eat Wheaties."

"Okay—your oatmeal. Or that green gunk you drink. The grass stuff," he says, his face collapsing into a disgusted pucker at the thought. After a moment of companionable silence, Booth speaks again. "I can't believe how calm she is, even though we've been talking this whole time."

"She knows our voices. She's used to hearing us talking all the time," Brennan offers, with a pleased smirk. "She's truly a gift though, isn't she? Look at her Booth. Look at what we made … she's beautiful!" Brennan gasps, shaking her head in feigned disbelief. "I find I cannot stop marveling at how—beautiful she is!"

"That she is. Look, she has your blue eyes!"

"Most babies are born with blue eyes, and they don't change until the baby is about nine months old, Booth. She could have your beautiful brown eyes," she says, twinkling at him sweetly.

"She's already got my forehead and cheek bones. I hope she has your eyes, I love your eyes," he says, tucking a loose hank of hair behind her ear and kissing her on her forehead.

She smiles sheepishly.

"I hope she has your heart," she says, quietly.

"She'll have both of our hearts. I hope she'll have your brains."

"I hope she has your facility with intuiting human behavior and motivation."

"We can both give her half a brain. I'll give her one half, you give the other. Which side is for people skills and which for science skills?"

"Left lobe dominant individuals are usually organized, rational, good at math, logical, detail-oriented, classical music lovers—"

"So, that would be you—"

"Correct," she agrees, nodding once. "Right lobe dominant individuals are usually creative, good at sports, rock music lovers . They enjoy interacting with people, but become restless during long verbal explanations." She smiles, amused.

"And … that would be me," he says. "One lobe for me, one for you. I get the right: you get the left."

"Exactly."

They stare at Christine in silence for a moment. She's fallen asleep, her face motionless and angelic.

"Well, look at that!" Booth says looking at her tiny little fingers. "What is that on her finger?" He says, exaggeratedly, yet in a serious tone.

"What?" Brennan is only slightly alarmed. Remember, she's high.

"That little blue thing. Right there. It looks like a ring, or something. Wrapped around her middle finger."

"Booth, are you feeling alright? I don't see anything –" Now she's a little concerned about her mate. _He does need some sleep,_ she thinks.

"Sure you do," he insists in a persuasive tone. "That's my heart wrapped around her tiny little finger," he says, touching the tiny fingers curled up and laying limp on top of the swaddled blanket she's wrapped in.

Brennan's eyebrows scoot together, she purses her lips, then breaks into a smile when she realizes what he's doing.

"Oh! You mean that tiny little blue thing?" She says, playfully as she catches on to his charade. "You mean that thing right there, right above that other little thing wrapped around her finger?" She looks up at Booth, pressing her lips together in a sly grin. "This one is red. I feel certain that little red thing is _my _heart," she chuckles n a deep tone.

"Bones, you do know that hearts can't actually be wrapped around a finger," he says, mockingly.

She gives him a look. Then shoots him a squinty, playful, stink eye.

"Anyway," he continues, biting his lips together between his teeth for a moment, suppressing a giggle. _"My_ little heart is blue because I am the father – and a boy. See how that works? Yours should be pink because you are the mother - and a girl."

"Nooo," she insists, her voice making a rolling hill as it drags out of her mouth. "This is a heart we area talking about. You are blue, representing arteries, the part of the circulatory system that brings the blood back to the heart. Always going back to the heart. I am red, representing veins, the part of the circulatory system that provides life-sustaining oxygen out to all the other systems of the human body. Always bringing life from the heart outward." She smiles, triumphantly.

"How appropriate," Booth says, nodding his approval. This is how they work together. This is how they share their views of the world. Different, but equal. Coming from two different corners of thought, two different lobes, but mutually valid. They meet in the center, and that's where they hold.

"You are going to be such a good mom – you already are … I gotta get used to that – You're a mom! And I'm a dad – again – to a baby girl. Oh – I gotta go call Parker back. I told him I'd call him once we got home!" He says, placing a hand on the back of her head and standing up to kiss her on the lips.

"Booth—" she calls as he walks toward the door. _You're a good husband, _she thinks, not even sure how that term uncharacteristically slipped into her mind. Little thoughts like this had been coming regularly lately. "Let me say hello to Parker when you get him on the line. You already sent him the picture, right?"

"Are you kidding? I sent it to him the minute we left the barn. Well , I sent it to Rebecca's phone," he says, before she can remind him that Parker doesn't have a phone.

"See? Such a good father," she says, pressing her lips together in an admiring smile.

Booth takes four strides back into the room and bends to kiss her firmly on the lips, then straightens, pauses, and bends down to kiss her one more time before leaving the room to find his phone.

Brennan smiles contemplatively as Christine stirs. She realizes she had stopped rocking when Booth came back to kiss her. She begins rocking once more.

"Hush little baby don't say a word," she whisper-sings to the precious miracle in her arms. "Papa's gonna buy you a mocking bird." She pauses and smiles. "If that mockingbird don't sing, Papa's gonna buy you … a diamond ring."

Her voice trails off … as she thinks about the social contract intended by a diamond ring. One she doesn't need, but he does. "Well, little girl – you are going to learn that life is all about compromise. And sometimes we make choices that on their face may appear irrational. So what should we do? Should we let papa buy us a diamond ring?"

* * *

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	7. Parker's Story

A/N ~ Just a short cutie for you while you wait for the next The When and the How:A Bone to Pick  
>chapter! Enjoy!<p>

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><p>Note: Believe it or not, this little scene has been part of my plan ever since the moment I started writing <strong>And Baby Makes Three<strong> and **The After in the Birth.** I understand Parker will show up in an upcoming episode. Which, of course, he certainly should - as part of the Booth family! Purportedly, he has some difficulty with the new family development - which is also expected whenever there is such a drastic change in a little person's life.

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><p><strong>Parker's Story<br>**Set to Coincide with S7E7 The Prisoner in the Pipe - AKA: The Birth Episode  
>Immediately following the end of The After in the Birth<p>

"Rebecca, is Parker up? Sorry for calling so late. We've been, uh, kinda busy," Booth said anxiously when Rebecca answered her cell.

"Seeley, it's ten after eleven!" Rebecca's stern voice rang out.

"Wha-" Booth blurted defensively.

Rebecca chuckled. "I'm just giving you crap. Remember how exhausted we were when Parker was born? And _everyone_ wanted a piece of us. Your Pops had been in the waiting room for three hours before we thought to call my parents. They were so pissed! You won't get any complaints from me, Seeley. How's temperance?"

"Oh, Rebecca," sighed Booth, rubbing his forehead then bending over to lean half his chest his elbows and on the kitchen counter top. "Woah, you had me going." He sighed heavily. "What a day! That kid just had to be born, Rebecca, right then and there. In a barn, no less. Man!"

"That's what you said when you called." Pause. She almost said, _that could have been us,_ but didn't. She occasionally still wondered what life would have been like if she and Booth had made it work. Rebecca no longer wanted that life with Booth; she truly had moved on, and she still had substantial reservations about the risks of Booth's chosen profession. She'd simply been feeling the same kind of pang one feels when finding out an ex-lover is getting married; that they've moved on irreversibly, and you've been left behind.

The news of Booth and Brennan being together as an official couple had come at the same time as the news about their pregnancy. Rebecca had assumed that Booth and Temperance would eventually become a couple, if they could get their poo together, that is. Rebecca hadn't allowed herself to think about it much though. Then, one afternoon when she brought Parker to the Jeffersonian for the weekend hand-off, she saw Brennan already quite heavy with child at only five months. That was when it really hit her. She felt like the Sally in the movie 'When Harry Met Sally' when Sally finds out her last boyfriend had gotten engaged or married. Like her life should have progressed more swiftly as well.

"The photo-she's beautiful," said Rebecca wistfully after a moment.

"Rebecca, you have no idea. She has these perfect little pink lips and these beautiful blue eyes—they aren't Brennan's cool blue—and it's probably a temporary blue because most babies are born with blue eyes, but then change by the time they are one year old. Her head is shaped exactly like Parker's and she has that same little horizontal crease in her chin that Parker had until he was one year old. Remember that and how perfectly round that kid's head was? We thought he was going to be a football player! You know, I'd forgotten how good babies smell. And Brennan says Christine has—"

"Christine?"

"Yeah," Booth said, pausing, closing his eyes from fatigue, but also happy to be talking to someone he had a lot of history with. Camille, he had history with her, of course, lots of history. But sharing a child brings a unique kind of depth to a relationship that friendship alone doesn't provide. "Bones' mom's name. Middle name; Angela. After, you know, Angela at the Jeffersonian."

"Of course, I know Angela," she said, whispering as if trying not to wake Parker. "What's the last name going to be?"

"Well, I thought Christine Angela Bones-Booth sounded cool," chuckled Booth, "but 'Bones' isn't Brennan's legal name. We're still working that out. I assume Parker is in bed?"

"Yeah—but I promised I'd wake him when you called, no matter what the time."

"Don't wake him, Rebecca, he's got a busy day ahead of him tomorrow—"

"He will never forgive me if I don't, Seeley. Besides, he's you're A-Number One, right? I think he's a little concerned he's being replaced—"

"—Oh no. What makes you think that?" Booth asked tentatively, praying Rebecca had misinterpreted her son's behavior.

"Well, you told him he could be in the waiting room when the baby was on the way. You've told him so many times about your excitement when he was being born and what it was like waiting in that little room. The pacing, the crappy television without cable, the mushy hospital cafeteria food—the cigars."

"Oh, no," said Booth, exhaling loudly as he stood up and rakes a fist through his hair. "I did tell him that didn't I—that he could be there." Booth puckered his lips in consternation, hoping a good idea will come to him. "Well, Rebecca, no one got to be in the waiting room. We never even made it to the hospital! What am I gonna do?"

"Do what you always do, Seeley," said Rebecca, assuredly.

"What's that? What do I always do?" He shuddered, his mind going blank.

"Talk to him like he's an adult. You know, that 'man to man' thing you do like you're letting him in on a secret that only men know. That makes him feel grown-up, important."

"Yeah?"

"Sure," she said, confidently. "Seeley, when I ask him how the weekend went, I can tell he's holding something back sometimes. He'll start to tell me something, and then he'll stop. Then he'll say something like, 'you wouldn't understand, Mom, it's a guy thing'." She chuckled.

"Heh, heh, heh! Okay," said Booth, grimacing in pride. "Well, listen, Brennan is putting Christine down. Maybe if you could get Parker—"

"I will. And Seeley?"

"Yeah?"

"Congratulations. Truly. You are both going to be really great parents. Together, I mean."

"Thanks, Rebecca. I hope we can be as good as you and I are with Parker. Or, at least try to be—"

"Let's hope you're better," she chuckled. "Oh, I made a casserole for you guys. I'll bring it by tomorrow when I bring Parker over. Is that still okay – that he comes over—tomorrow?"

"Absa-frickin-_lutely._ I gotta introduce Christine to my A-Number One, right?"

"Yep," she chuckled, "Getting' Parker. No need to talk to me again tonight. Keep it short though, 'kay?"

"Right. No problem."

A moment later, Booth heard a _"Dad is on the phone?"_ yelp in the background.

"Dad?"

"He-e-e-ey, Buddy! How's my first-born son?"

"Tired. I tried to stay awake, Dad. Mom must have put me in bed while I was asleep—Is it the middle of the night?"

"No, Buddy. Well, almost," Booth said, his fondness for his son apparent in the gentle tone of his voice. "You saw the picture of Christine, right?"

"Of course, Dad. We even talked earlier, don't you remember?"

"Yep, it's just good to hear your voice, Buddy," said Booth. As precious as Christine is, Parker is just as precious, and would always be his first, his little man. The last thing he wanted is for Parker to feel he doesn't belong. Booth knows what not belonging feels like—it feels like being looked down on because you don't have a normal family like everyone else. For years, Booth did everything he could to ensure that Jared always felt like he belonged.

_Jared! Oh Sh-! _Thought Booth in alarm. _I haven't called Jared! Oh, God_! His mind went blank. He wasn't even sure he knew where Jared's contact information was—so much had gotten jumbled up in the move into their new home._ Man, I just want some sleep! _

"Dad-?"

"Yeah, Buddy?"

"You promised me I could be in the waiting room with you—" said Parker, trying not to sound like a whiney five year old, and disgusted as he heard his own words ring out as exactly that.

"I know, son, but you know what? We didn't even make it to the hospital ourselves. There was no waiting room! We had to deliver the baby in a barn—"

"—but Dad, you promised!" Parker gasped with a catch in his voice.

"I know I did," chagrined Booth. "Remember how we've talked about things not always going how a man plans them to go?"

Silence on the other end of the line.

"A man makes plans to do things one way for his family, tries to do the best he knows how—"

Still no response.

"—and sometimes, in the end, you just hope everyone is safe and it all turns out."

"I know, Dad, but—"

Parker was silent.

"What is it, Buddy?"

"Well—"

"You can tell me, Parker," Booth encouraged. He understood that Parker wanted to say something that might not come out very masculine or mature. "Just you and me. The men in the family. Spill. My ears are open."

Parker sighed loudly. "Dad, I—I wanted to be part of the story—"

"The story. What story?" Booth's brow crinkled. He didn't know what he'd expected, but this wasn't it. _What does that mean? I don't know what he's talking about_, thought Booth. _Have I forgotten one of our—things we do, just Parker and me?_

"You know, the story you're gonna tell Christy when she's old enough to talk, Dad."

"Ohhhh. Oh, yeah, Bud! That story! Of course! Of course, you'll be part of that story. You are the very first person I called after Christine was born. We call her Christine, not Christy," he said. "The _very_ first person I called; and the very first person to ever see a picture of her. Know what that means?"

"What Dad?" Parker wasn't yet sure if this was sufficient consolation for not getting to be right there in the waiting room. "What does it mean?" He asked, suspiciously.

"Ha-huh! It means, Parker, that it was just us, just family, who knew about her birth. Just you and me and Bones."

"And Mom—"

"Yep, Mom is family. It was just us four and Christine."

"Well—"

"Parker. Listen to me. No one else in the universe knew she'd been born until hours later."

"Hours?"

"Shhh-yeah. Hours. Like … three hours, Buddy," he assured Parker, rounding up the number.

"Really?"

"Yeah. We didn't have cell reception in the barn, so I ran up to the winery thing and called you from there. I even left Bones and Christine in the barn _by themselves _once I knew they were okay so I could run up and tell you! I didn't have time to call anyone else—I couldn't leave Bones for more than five minutes. No one else knew until we were well on our way back home. You are the only one."

"Wow."

"Yeah. And the photo was Bones' idea. She was thinking about you too."

"Really?"

"Yep. You can as her. I'm not kiddin'."

"Well, I guess that does make me part of the story, doesn't it?"

"Absolutely, Buddy," sighed Booth, certain he'd finally made it over the first of many, he assumed, half sibling hurdles. The two sat in silence for a beat. It didn't bother either one of them to have a lull in the conversation. It's kind of a guy thing.

"So—what was it like?" Parker finally asked, his tone turning from one of complacent submission to one of interest.

"Oh, man. You know what? Don't tell your mom this, but it was scary as heck," he said, chuckling as he swipes his hand all the way down his face from his forehead to his neck. "I've never delivered a baby!" Booth put a great deal of concern in his voice, though he didn't feel it any longer. This was as close as he could get to actually sharing that birthing experience with Parker. "Geez, Parker. I really could have used your help—"

"Really?" Asked Parker, chuckling in surprise.

"You have no idea. I couldn't leave Bones—but I could have used a partner to run to the car and get things for me, or help Bones stay calm. Or help me stay calm!" Booth sighed a hefty relieved sigh for Parker's benefit. "But we did okay. We did fine. And they are both doing good."

"Dad, do you think you and Bones might have any more babies?"

"What? Huh? One kid at a time, man!" He chuckled incredulously.

"Just promise me that if you have another baby, I get to be there."

"I'll do what I can, pal. You have my word."

"Word of honor?"

"Honor and Glory, son. Honor and Glory. You have my word."

"Dad, if that's good enough for our country, it's good enough for me—"

"Ohhhh. I wonder where you heard that—" Booth was certain Parker could hear his raised chiding eyebrow through his tone.

"Ohhh. You know, Dad. Just some guy I see a lot of every other weekend—" Parker let his voice trail off, his insinuation made perfectly clear.

Neither father nor son could see the other's face, but they could hear each other's affectionate smiles over the silence.

"Hey, sounds like Bones coming down the steps. She wanted to talk to you. Are you too tired, or—"

"Yeah! No! I'm not too tired," pleaded Parker over a wide yawn.

"Heh, heh. Okay, Buddy. Would you mind coming over tomorrow? Christine wants to meet you."

"Dad, she can't talk," answered Parker, "but, sure. I'm still comin' over. Wild horses, right?"

"Yep—wild horses couldn't keep you away, huh?"

"Nope—or scary FBI agents."

Booth snorts. "'Kay. Good night, Buddy. I love you."

"Night dad, love you too. Now, gimme Bones!"

* * *

><p>EndNote: Does this mean Parker will not be challenged by the dynamic of being the child that doesn't get to live fulltime with his father like Christine does?<strong> No<strong>. Does it mean Booth will always handle Parker's upsets with great aplomb?** Certainly not.** Parker is human. Both is human. Bones is also human. Who knows how this will affect each relationship? Like any family, they will have issues - messy issues, upsetting issues, recurring issues ... which they will hopefully find are surmountable issues.

I had intended for Booth to also allude to Parker coming over the next day to start painting his own bedroom in their new house ... for certainly he has one, right? I sincerely hope they show that Parker is as much a part of the family as Christine is. For right now, in the MoxieGirl Universe, this first hurdle has been finessed in what I feel is in great "Boothy" fashion. Surely the show will not go back and relive this evening ... so I feel confident that my little chapter will not contradict canon - but I have been proven wrong in the past - so who knows!

I hope you enjoyed this little peak into their new life!

* * *

><p>Back to work I go ... were Rebecca's thought believable? How about the conversation with Parker.<br>I have never had to deal with particular situation - so I am going on what I have seen and read.  
>Your input is appreciated! So ... thank you in advance!<p>

~ MoxieGirl  
>~MoxieGirl44 on Twitter<p> 


	8. Post Partum Parents

**Author's Note: **Hey there folks! Yes, I just** had **to write one more of these 'Meaning' chapters before returning to** The When the How: A Bone to Pick. **Those last eight chapters of TWATH:AB2P took a lot of energy and time. It was like being in therapy myself for 8 hours a day! Though there are two WONDERFUL Season 7 episodes still not covered here, they shall now have to wait...at least until they figure out cloning, for I am off to my first love now.

Enjoy tonight's Bones episode! We are supposed to see Parker on the screen once again! We'll see if they make a liar out of me ...

~ MoxieGirl

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><p><strong>The Post partum Parents<strong>  
>The fourth vignette set to Coincide with S7E7 The Prisoner in the Pipe.<p>

"Booth," said Bones as she entered their bedroom after hanging up with Parker. "I find myself disoriented by the hormonal imbalances brought on by birthing and—well—I think I'd appreciate your input about something that may or may not—"

"You got it," he said distractedly, patting the bed beside him. He had been sitting up waiting for her. As fatigued as Booth's body was, his brain remained alert as a result of the vast range of thoughts and emotions he'd experienced throughout the day. "Whatever you need, gorgeous. Lay it on me. I'm your man—"

"Yes, you are," she said, agreeably, with an appreciative grin, the left side of her lips curling up in a smile as the same eyebrow arched over her brow bone. She sat down on her side of the bed and kicked off the sweaty pink bunny slippers, scratching the bottom of one foot against the toes of the other. Booth pulled the covers the rest of the way back for her, but instead of getting under them, Brennan sat on top of them with her feet tucked underneath her. "But what are you thinking about, Booth? You have a pensive expression on your face," she observed, catching his eye for the first time since she entered the room.

"I do?" He paused.

"Yes, you do. The corners of your mouth slope slightly downward, the occipitofrontalis over your suborbital ridge are contracted, your lateral canthal wrinkles are pronounced, and you've been rhythmically clenching your temporomandibular joint since I entered the room," she provided succinctly, cocking her head to the side, a frown creasing her own forehead. "You are going to give yourself a headache if you don't relax, Booth. Are you troubled to see me here without Christine? I assure you she eructated spectacularly after nursing and is sleeping soundly," she assured him, clearly impressed with their daughter's biological functions.

"She erupted? You mean, she threw up?"

"She expelled gas and air that she'd swallowed during her feeding."

"Of course, of course," he said with small chuckle, finally giving Brennan his full attention. "Normal people call that 'burping' Must you be so _pedantic_?" He said, haughtily.

"Whoooo—oohhh! Ten-dollar word, _pedantic,_ Booth. Impressive," she said. "And, yes, I have to be _pedantic_ to counterbalance your _pedestrian _vocabulary," she countered, smugly amused.

"Whatever," he snorted, rolling his eyes.

"So, what were you thinking about?"

"Oh. Umm," he said, his cheeks puffing out and his shoulders falling as he exhaled. "I'm—thinking about Parker," he said, shrugging and bringing his eyes up to meet hers.

"He was not as excited as I expected him to be about Christine's birth," Brennan said, sounding slightly disappointed.

"He's just tired. It's well past his bedtime. He'd fallen asleep while waiting for my call," Booth said distractedly.

"Are you okay?" She asked turning at a great angle to face him and noticing that he again had that slack jawed vacant look in his eyes.

"Just thinking what it might be like to be him," he said dolefully with a shrug. "Can you imagine what it would be like if I brought another woman into our home and said, here's my other girlfriend. I will be loving her just as much as I love you, though she is going to get most of my time and attention for a good long while. Sorry if that bothers you; your vote doesn't count. Deal with it," he spouted. "Oh, and if you throw a temper tantrum at any point over this, you will be severely punished."

"Huh, huh," she laughed, the sound resonating deeply in her chest. "That would never happen." She smiled at him snarkily.

"Well, they say that's how it feels to a kid when you bring a new baby home."

"But Parker doesn't live with us, Booth—"

"And that's a whole other ball of wax. What if I further said—this is about my new girlfriend again—that she was going to live with me full time, and you could just visit … but you have to go on believing that I still love you just as much as I ever did."

"I see your point. I'd kick you in the testicles. Or, does Rebbecca own a gun?" She asked flatly. Booth's pupils contracted to pinpoints in response, his eyelids retreating back into his head. Brennan, never having seen such a panicked expression on Booth's face, grabbed his forearm and shook it gently, sliding her hand down his arm to lock her fingers between his and squeeze his hand reassuringly. "Booth! That was a joke. Certainly Rebbecca does not have a gun. I apologize if my attempt at joviality alarmed you."

Booth had gone pale. He could feel his heartbeat pounding in his ears. "This is pretty bad, isn't it? Oh man," he despaired, pressing his left hand against his forehead while digging his fingers into his hair as the blood continued draining from his face. After a moment, he turned and stared at Brennan, cupping his chin.

"Booth, your comparison was deliberately histrionic and unrealistic. You would never say that to me, and you would never say that, or imply that in any way, to Parker."

"I don't think I'm exaggerating, Bones," he insisted. "Someone actually told me that! That's how some kids feel! What if he feels that way?"

Brennan searched Booth's face, attempting to ascertain the best response to his concerns, which were obviously very real to him.

"Booth, you are always trying to make everything perfect, as if you are trying to make-up for not having had a perfect childhood yourself. Nothing is perfect," she said calmly, squeezing his fingers with hers once again. "Okay, I did say that the barn was a perfect location for Christine's birth, but I was awash with hormones … and truly it was a fine location—"

"I just—I want what's best for him."

"Then stop obsessing over what has yet to come," she said, wrinkling her forehead and dipping her chin to look up at him so he knew she meant business. "And just love him, Booth. When he's here, give him your undivided attention as much as you possibly can. If problems arise, you will deal with them. Conjecture is irrelevant."

Booth covered their intertwined fingers with his other hand and pinched his lips, looking at her sideways. She could tell he was trying to be convinced, but wasn't quite sold on her recommendations yet.

"He was upset that he couldn't be in the hospital waiting room when she was born," he said, finally, as if this were his proof that there, indeed, was already trouble in paradise.

"No one was," she shrugged, shaking her head, while adjusting the pillows behind her back. "It was just you and me—and then Christine. Just like it was when we conceived her," she said with a gentle smile. "Though, that may depend upon your belief about when life begins—"

"I know no one else was there," he conceded with a guilty smile. "But that doesn't matter to Parker. He was looking forward to being 'part of the story', as he calls it. Christine's birth story."

"He wants to be included. I suspect that is normal."

"Sure. It's just—going to be hard to include him when he doesn't live here."

"He understands that, don't you think? And, he _should _be involved, just like any other big brother. He can hold her, push her in the stroller, and eventually, he can help change diapers and feed her, play with her on the floor."

"Yeah. That's true," he agreed, moving his head side to side as if weighing options.

"Booth. There's an old Irish saying: If 'ifs' were fifths of Whiskey, we'd all be inebriated indefinitely," she said chuffing. "I don't know an old saying about _wishes_, in particular, but I am certain the same philosophy applies."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning don't focus on what _might_ happen, or try to bend you life to fit a wish. Live in the present, in what _is_happening. Now."

"He's not used to sharing me, Bones. He's the center of our attention, mine and Rebecca's."

She nodded and pressed her lips together, sympathetically. "He shares you with me, Booth."

"That's different. You're not another child," he insisted. "When he's with you and me, he's the center of our attention, isn't he?"

"Always. We've made sure of that. Since the beginning. That has always been very important to you, Booth."

"Right. I just," he shrugged, looking vulnerable suddenly, "I don't want him to think he's being replaced."

"Why would he think that? Christine is an infant, not a nine or ten year old boy."

"I know that, Bones," he said, in a snarky tone as he grimaced at her, "but in the past we've tried to do whatever he wants to do, within reason. We go to the park, the zoo, bowling, bike riding, roller blading, a game, the museum—we toss the ball around, hit the ice—" he said, tossing his hand in the air. "Swimming! Those are all things kids his age like to do."

"Yeah. Why would that change?"

"You can't ride a bike or go skating with an infant. You can't walk around the zoo when it's time for a feeding. A baby can't play Chutes and Ladders or toss a ball—"

"I don't understand. These sound like common fears, Booth. People have more than one child. The existing progeny adjust," she said, shrugging. "Besides, there are baby carriers for biking, strollers for going to the zoo or museum, and who says all of your time with Parker has to be spent with me and Christine? I suspect that some time alone for the two of you is going to prove even more important than it is now."

Booth nodded pensively, flicking a glance at her as he considered her words.  
>"Well, what if he looks at us and Christine and sees that she gets to live with us all the time. In this nice house. Like a family. The American Dream. And he's not part of it."<p>

"That's your very limited idea of family, Booth. Cultures since the dawn of time have always developed their own definitions of the family unit based upon the needs of the community as a whole. Not all parents raise their own progeny. Some cultures have recognized that the ability to procreate is not indicative of an individual's superior ability to nurture their young. Instead, members of the tribe are chosen as the nurturers, while parents expend their energies doing what they do best for the community as a whole—" Brennan stopped when she noticed he was no longer paying attention. She chewed on her bottom lip and sighed, then shook the hand she was holding.

"Booth. He's a good boy, a smart boy. And you're an attentive father. The fact that you are investing time and energy to process these concerns is a testament to that," she said, pressing her lips together until they disappear altogether. "So, just love Parker. And take your own advice."

"Which advice is that?" He looks at her sideways, tiny vertical lines appearing once again between his eyebrows.

"Take it one day at a time," she said and smiled adoringly.

Booth sighed one final time, raised their intertwined jumble of phalanges, and kissed the back of her hand. It was a gesture of surrender. "One day at a time, Sweeeeeeeet Baby Jesus," he drawled, then smiled his appreciation at her.

"Aren't you going to take your bathrobe off?" He asked, just now noticing she'd gotten into bed wearing the bathrobe.

"Booth—"

"What? Are you cold?"

"No—actually I'm quite warm. It's just—" Brennan said, sighing heavily.

"What?"

"This is what I wanted to ask you about—" She started, tentatively. "When I first came in here. Though you most likely were unaware of it due to your focus on your concerns about Parker."

"Sorry," he said, sighing. "We've handled my neurosis for the night, I cede the floor to yours," he chuckled. Booth watched her follow him with her eyes as he leaned toward her and pressed his firm, soft lips to her cheekbone for a little nibble and a wet kiss. When he pulled away, his big brown eyes were shiny, warm, compassionate, and full of love for this woman he'd searched his whole life to find and love.

"I've been experiencing irrational thoughts which I suspect to be the product of—," she whispered throatily, mesmerized by the intensity behind his gaze and the affection she knew he'd cultivated only for her. His ability to swiftly put his own concerns aside and give her his full attention still amazed her. "To be precise, I am not certain if they _are _irrational. That is what I would appreciate your input regarding," she said, grimacing at him self-consciously as she slid over to sit next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and finally slid her legs under the covers. "Ahhhhhhhh," she sighed, slowly closing her eyes and leaning against the headboard in response to the welcome sensation of those cool sheets against her overheated skin.

"My increased basal temperature, the reason I feel warm, is a result of the rapidly fluctuating levels of progesterone and estrogen in my system. I'm not concerned about that, though I do find it uncomfortable. I've been experiencing a disconcerting sensation as a result of the abrupt cessation of activity in my womb. Accompanying this is a sense of anxiety—increased heart rate, shallow respiration, the sudden and excessive excretion of water and sodium chloride from my sudoriferous glands—"

"What? You're secreting something?" Booth blurted, sitting bolt upright, unable to stop himself from ripping back the sheets and glancing down toward her lap.

"No," replied Brennan, slightly annoyed as she grabbed the sheets and pulled them back over her legs. "I'm perspiring," she said, fanning herself and pulling at the top of her bathrobe in an attempt to get some air circulating through her clothing.

"Whew," sighed Booth in falsetto, forcibly exhaling, then swallowing audibly and collapsing back against the pillows and headboard. "So, you're okay?" He asked, wanting one more assurance.

"Physically, I am fine, Booth. Emotionally, hormonally? I'm crashing a bit."

"Oh," he said, sighing once again. "Thank God!"

"Booth, you have _got_ to freeze out," Brennan admonished. "You are far too young to display symptoms mimicking cardio pulmonary arrest!" She warned. "This is _Not. That. Serious! _It's simply a—a series of hormonally induced neurological events, most likely very common, I surmise, in women who've recently undergone parturition!"

"Wait. Freeze out?" He asked, a quizzical expression plastered all over his face.

"Yes, Booth! Please focus, this is already extraordinarily confusing for me!" She half whimpered. "Freeze out or—or—congeal_ax_—or however the hell you want to put it. I can't keep up with these urban—sayings of yours if—"

_"Chill_ out," he said, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers and chuckling. "And, _chillaxing_, huh, Bones? As in—calm down? Take a _chill pill_. Relax?"

"Booth," she began in a complaining tone, dragging his name out in a rolling whine, "That's what I said!" She insisted, now clearly irritated. Then she calmed slightly, hanging her head as she stared at her fingers, wrapping and unwrapping the ends of her bathrobe ties around them. "See this?" She tossed out, throwing her hands in the air and puckering as she shook her head side to side. "Look at me. Now I'm being irrational. I'm chastising you—for my own—" she gasped, frustrated.

_"Ohhhh_-kay. _Wa-a-a-ait _a second, Bones," sympathized Booth, noticing her eyes looked like they were about to tear up. Raising his arm, he put it around her and squeezed her in pulses, rocking her gently side to side. "Listen. Hey, listen," he said, lifting her chin with his knuckle so she had to look up at him. "Sh, sh, sh, hey. Shhhh. Huh?" He wiped some moisture from her bottom lid with his thumb.

She locked eyes with him and tilted her head back slightly as she sniffed through each intake of breath, then exhaled through her mouth as she leaned forward, exhaling cool air across both of them. The cool breeze caused by her exhale felt good; she'd been so warm all evening.

"That's right, Bones," Booth said gently. "Just breathe." _Poor thing,_ he thought. _She's rarely this … visibly affected or anxious. _His heart was breaking for her. As difficult as it was to watch his steady-as-a-rock partner being bitch-slapped by her own hormonal imbalance, he knew it was nothing in comparison to what it must feel like to be actually living inside her skin right now. "If you're hot let's just get this thing off you," he said in a concerned tone, pulling the tie of her bathrobe completely loose, then slipping the robe backwards off her shoulders. Brennan acquiesced obediently, leaning toward Booth then away so he could easily release the garment from where she was sitting on it.

Underneath the bathrobe was revealed a knee-length soft cotton rose-wine sleeveless V-neck faux wrap nursing nightgown.

"Wow. Where'd you get that hot little number?" Booth asked in surprised delight.

"It's _not _hot, Booth. That's the point. Sleeveless, see? This was one of the socially obligatory post gestational gifts from Angela. She said it would provide useful immediately following delivery. Well, not immediately," she chagrined. "Anyway, I assured her it wasn't necessary for her to provide me with sleeping attire as I already have a sufficient supply, but then she demonstrated how this top section works—" she explained as she untied the little ribbon just below one breast and half uncovered herself to demonstrate the easy breastfeeding access, "—and it became clear the ingeniousness of her gift choice."

"Uhhhhh huh!" Chortled Booth in a deep delighted tone. "My God. It's very … uh, pretty. And, you can say it's not hot and sexy all you want, but let me assure you, it most certainly is," he snorted, chuckling once with a wild gleeful glint in his eye as he reached over and ran the side of his index finger along the exposed curve of her breast.

"Booth," yelped Brennan, shrinking from his touch and retying the ribbon despite the goose bumps and the involuntary shiver that shook her body in response to his feather soft caresses. "It is designed so that the lactating mother needn't fully disrobe or end up smothering her infant in hitched-up fabric while providing nourishment."

"I see," replied Booth, with a twinkle in his eye and a quick rise and fall of his eyebrows, "so the sexiness is just a fringe benefit. I get it," he said holding her gaze as he gradually leaned forward, his destination the voluptuousness peeking over the V-neck of her gown. Brennan whipped out a hand and placed it on Booth's forehead, pushing him back and upright before he sank his face into her mountainous cleavage.

"Booth, I'm serious," she chuckled weekly. "Though, this does happen to be directly related to my observations in regard to my post-pregnancy physiology. Stop it," she chided, smiling indulgently and pushing his hand away as he playfully attempted to untie the ribbon once again.

"I'm sorry," he said, grinning sheepishly. "Can you really blame me, Bones? Huh? You are the sexiest woman I know. Even fully dressed you are way sexier than most women when they are completely naked," he said with an amused expression, his chin dipped low to his chest as he twinkled at her through his lashes.

She shot him a _'you are incorrigible'_ glance and rolled her eyes, but couldn't hide that she was pleased with his answer.

"Booth, you have an overdeveloped sense of your own sexual prowess which is typical in alpha males such as yourself," she said, tilting her head to the right.

"Huh?"

"You have _not seen _most other women completely naked, so that is a gross exaggeration." After a pause, she continued, her expression wary and a little defensive. "Are you saying you find my current form more appealing fully clothed than disrobed?" She asked, rearing back slightly.

"Wha—No! No! That is not at all what I meant. No. Geez no!" He choked out, furrowing his suddenly perspiring brow and shaking his head back and forth vehemently. "Those other women—" _Shut up, you idiot! _He thinks to himself in a panic. _Don't say anything about other women you've seen naked. What the hell's wrong with you? _"—never mind, Bones. I'm just sayin' that you look—you are—spectacular—fantastic—in that little pajama thingy you got on! Clothed or completely naked—either way—Whoa, jump back! You're the hottest thing I've ever seen! You are—Aphrodite; you are Venus de Milo; you are," he says, emphasizing each word, "Marilyn Monroe—you are my living, breathing fantasy, Bones—all the way. I feel sorry for the guys that don't get to see you naked, because—oh, hell, please tell me to shut up before I dig this hole any deeper—"

"You can stop now," she said, with an amused smirk, scooting up beside him, leaning against his ribcage when he raised his arm to pull her close. "There's a flaw in your reasoning, though, Booth."

"What?" Pause. "No, I don't think so," he chuckled. "I am an expert at your naked body," he chortled confidently as his eyebrows shot up once quickly.

"However, you failed to take into account that you haven't seen me naked since Christine was born—and there have been some changes…"

"Well," stammered Booth hesitantly. She had him, and he knew it. He hoped this conversation was going in a good direction and that he didn't screw it up. "You may have a point—" he said, twisting his mouth to the left as he chewed on the inside of his bottom lip. "Huh."

She stared back at him expectantly.

"What am I supposed to say now?" He asked.

"Nothing. Or, you could admit that I am correct."

"Well, you _are _correct, but that could be remedied quite simply—"

"Booth, I birthed a miniature biped from the hominid species just hours ago—and I'm tired. Too tired to prance around—" she said, gesturing toward the area of the room surrounding their bed.

"You don't need to prance—" he mumbled.

"You know what I mean," she chided, one eyebrow cocked.

"Hey, you're the one who brought it up—"

"I did not!" She objected before launching into a defensive run-on sentence. _"You _were the one who said I'm sexier fully clothed than most women are completely naked, and then _you _back-peddled by commenting on the superior—uh, on how much observing me naked gives you pleasure, and _you _claimed to be the expert at that activity, then _I _corrected you by stating that I gave birth and there have been some physiological changes which you have yet to assess and catalog."

"Game. Set. Match. You win," he surrendered, rubbing her arm vigorously. "Listen, you're not the only one who's body has undergone changes during this pregnancy. Look at me," he said, pinching his midsection. "I'm like a college freshman! I've gained fifteen pounds my first nine months on the job!" He chuckled as she tilted her head and smirked at him.

"It's hardly the same, Booth," she said, pinching his cheek and yanking it gently.

He shrugged quickly. "So, are you getting naked or what?" he chuckled teasingly, not expecting her to answer in the affirmative and hoping it was evident in his tone.

"I certainly am not," she snorted, looking up at him. "But—oh, you were joking, weren't you?"

"Yep," he said, grinning affectionately into her beautiful clear blue eyes and sighing to himself. "Though I wouldn't stop you—" he offered with a chuckle.

Brennan smiled, then rested her head on his chest again.

"Hm," Booth grunted noncommittally. "You really think I catalog your body parts?" He asked, curious.

"I know you do."

"No, you don't. How could you?"

"Yes, I do. I've seen you do it."

"What?"

"Close your eyes," she commanded like a teacher to a kindergarten class.

He squinted at her suspiciously, but closed his eyes anyway.

"Okay. Now, think about my feet," she suggested.

He snorted, opened his eyes, and looked at her mutinously. "Is this a trick?" When she didn't respond other than to glare at him, he shrugged and closed his eyes again. After a moment, a smile spread across his face. "Ahhhh. I love my job," he sighed.

"Now my knees—"

He nodded. He could hear the smile in the tone of her voice, and he couldn't resist mentally cataloguing her face for a moment.

"Now my thighs-"

His brows pinched together and the smile became more of a delighted smirk.

"Now, think about my gluteus maximus," she said, chuckling and sighing.

"Oh, I love the gluteus maximus, _your _gluteus maximus," he hummed in a wistful tone.

"My inominates, my hips."

Booth's eyebrows floated toward his hairline. "I love it when you talk dirty to me," he said with a grin, but without opening his eyes. She chuckled.

"My abdomen, my belly." She watched him closely, enjoying this little game.

"Pregnant or before pregnant?"

"It's_ your _imagination, Booth."

"I love my imagination." A grin flashed across his face.

"I know you do," she snorted. "Well, as I have told you numerous times, your brain_ is _your largest sex organ."

"You're the star of my imagination, you know," he said sweetly. "I've hung pictures of you all over the walls in there," he sighed. "The inside of my brain looks like the wall of a sailor's bunk," he chuckled in delight.

"Metaphorically speaking, I'm sure you mean."

"Oh, no. They are literally there. If you cracked open my brain right now, a bunch of Bones centerfold-quality posters would fly out," he said, nodding and laughing.

"You are quite humorous, Booth. Now, think about the curve of my neck—" She said, her voice growing softer. "I am finding that I enjoy this exercise," she admitted with a lilt, a tickling sensation spilling into her temporomandibular, her jaw hinge, to accompany her widening smile.

Booth sighed a contented sigh. "Me too," he said, grinning, and opening one eye just a slit, then closing it again, a wink in reverse.

"My lips," she whispered, leaning more of her weight against his chest. He could feel her breath on his chin.

Booth licked his own lips then pressed them between his teeth as a grunt-like sound vibrated in his chest.

"Wait a minute! You skipped the best part!"

"Well, I didn't want to make you uncomfortable."

"What? Don't you think by now I'm used to the word 'breast' making its way into our every day conversations?"

"I didn't mean _mentally _uncomfortable," she says, suggestively.

"Oh," he said, exhaling a chuckle through his nose. "How thoughtful of you," he chortled. "A little too late for that," he snorted, and laughed, clearing his throat and wiggling around a bit, and giving her a playful pat on the butt.

"Now, think about my eyes," she said, her voice serious once again.

Booth's face relaxed and took on an expression that could only be described as pleased and loved. Brennan watched him, chuckling quietly to herself and smiling. She loved watching the pleasure she could give him with image words alone.

"This is almost as fun as when you brail me," he whispered, not wanting this game to stop.

"It pleases me that you are happy when you think about my body, Booth." They sat in peaceful silence for a moment; Booth eyes closed, Brennan's eyes trained on his face. She leaned in and covered his mouth with one smiling kiss, then another, until he opened his eyes and gazed at her, their noses just inches apart. Booth's smile broadened and he kissed her back.

"I do enjoy those lips," he said, sighing, his eyes falling to her mouth. "Almost as much as flipping through my mental photo albums of you."

"I thought you said the photos were hanging on the walls of your imagination?"

"Oh, I have vast stores of Bones images up here," he said tapping his temple. "The walls are only one place I keep them," he assured her haughtily. She returned his smile and nudged his chin with her nose before settling back against his chest once again.

"See? You have inventoried all my body parts. Did you notice I did not attribute your sexual interest in my physiology to a hormonal surge from your pituitary gland, or anything having to do with the drive to perpetuate the race?"

"I did," he said, with a full toothy grin. "She can be taught," he said wistfully as if speaking to himself.

"Sometimes the best teachers make the worst students—" Brennan commented.

"Not in this case," he said with an assuring nod. "And did you notice my magnificent restraint? What I'd really like to do is flip you on your back and get started on baby Booth number three."

"In due time, Booth. In due time," she chortled, grinning while running her fingers over his pectoralis majors. Since they had became lovers over ten months ago, they'd discovered their own intimate pattern of sexual banter laced with delightful humor.

They once had a contest between them to see who could more colorfully describe how badly they wanted the other sexually and what they would do to them once they got them. Each depiction or scenario had to be better than the last, of course. The loser was to be the first one who couldn't resist jumping the other person while playing the game. As both Brennan and Booth are quite strong-willed and controlled, it lasted all of three days. In the end, it was Brennan's turn to submit an entry. She was fairly desperate by this point, and went for broke by slowly following him around the apartment as she took off her blouse, then her skirt, then her panty hose, then her jewelry, then she took out her pony tail and shook her hair loose. He, of course, accused her of playing dirty pool, which she hotly denied, though she knew he was right.

When she reached for her bra hooks, she found herself smash tackled and lying on the floor amid a pile of folders and books.

After three abstinent days of scorching hot verbal foreplay, you can imagine how frenzied and desperate that love making session was. Before they knew it there were books and files being whizzed out of the way and across the floor. They grabbed at each others clothing, what was left of it, and clawed at each others skin, becoming a blur of arms and legs and elbows and teeth and fingers and tongues. There was a fair amount of groans and sighs and yelps and fervent requests which were swiftly met and the calling out of names of deities that only one of them believed in. When the action came to a screaming, panting decrescendo, Brennan whispered into the ear pressed against her lips, _I won,_ to which he replied, _I beg to differ. _She then, of course, demanded a do-over. He then reminded her that he wasn't seventeen anymore, and offered her a rain check. She took the rain check and tendered it later that evening, submitting, in the end, that the game had been a delicious tie. Booth agreed that a tie was a fair ruling, and they went about their lives in the usual fashion.

"Now, what did you want to tell me about?" He asked her, squeezing his eyes shut and clearing his throat, trying to move on to the next topic as they sat in their bed while Christine snoozed in her crib down the hall. "You were worried about something when you came in here. What's going on inside that beautiful head of yours?"

"Ummmmm, Booth," she said introspectively after a moment. "Well, things happened so quickly today." She looked up at him through her lashes. "I keep telling myself to adjust, recalibrate," she said, suddenly aware of a slight tightness forming in her throat. She sniffed and shook her head in tiny adjustments from side to side, her eyes wide open and glossy. "Just this morning, we were in the bathroom, watching her calcaneus traverse my uterine wall. Remember that?"

"I do," he affirmed with a nod, smiling as he slid his fingers up and down her back. When she scooted down and laid her cheek and ear on his chest, he rested his hand on her hip. He pulled her more firmly against himself and squeezed her.

She looked up at him and paused. "Mmmmm-well," she began. "Now that my womb has been vacated, I am experiencing an unpleasantness—" She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment as if she were experiencing a sharp pain.

"What?" He asked, when she didn't say anything more.

Opening her eyes, she stared past him unfocused.

"There is a sense of—what, Bones?" He waited patiently as she chewed on a lip, furrowed her brow.

"I believe it is contra industriousness," she said in a tone indicative of how absurd that sounded to her. Then she grimaced and peeked up at Booth, then down again.

"Huh? You mean, uselessness?" Booth asked blankly, scrunching his lips into a pucker as he searched for her hip bone and playfully squeezed the soft padding covering it. He drew little circles with his thumbnail at the point where her hip became the top of her thigh. _What does that mean? _He thought_. Bones is the busiest, most useful person on the planet. How could she possibly feel useless? _

"Yes," she said, looking young and vulnerable suddenly. She shrugged. "As if my job were complete," she said, her tone uncertain. "I can't feel her moving anymore. I mean, of _course_ I can't feel her—she's _ex-utero_—she's here, in her crib down the hall. I don't know how to describe it. I feel—" she shrugs again. "Vacated. Then, I feel lonely."

"Well, your body _is _finished growing that baby, but your real work is only beginning. You are anything but useless, Bones, even though she's transitioned from inside you to out here in the world. But, your body certainly still has work to do, nutritionally, as well as emotionally and physically. You know, she needs to be held and touched and kissed. Just like the rest of us. Babies need love to grow, thrive, Bones. It's actually been proven scientifically."

"You are correct, Booth," she replied, focusing on the hum of his voice through his chest. "And you are making sense." She nodded agreeably..

Booth pulled her into a hug with both arms around her and kissed her forehead several times. He rubbed her arm with his palm until she closed her eyes and relaxed against his chest once again.

"And Bones," he sighed, "You are the most industrious person I know." He said, kissing her once again. "Your work as a mother? This is only the beginning. Now the real work begins."

"I'm not unhappy, Booth," she said, distractedly rubbing his tee shirt between her fingers as her fist rested on his chest. "Occasionally, endorphins and oxytocin flood my system and I find myself feeling grateful and euphoric about her being here where we can actually see her," she explains. "I'm—" she shudder-shrugs. "I'm just in unfamiliar territory. It is disconcerting and unpleasant at times. That's all."

"I'll bet it is," assured Booth. "There is bound to be a degree of—loss, maybe even grief—over these abrupt changes."

"You think so?" She asked abruptly, leaning back to look up into his eyes.

"Of course." He said in a confident, assuring tone. "Absolutely, Bones."

"And that has to be quite a universal experience among post gravida females, right?"

"What?" Booth's pinched eyebrows denoted his confusion. "Does this have to do with weight—or gravity. Less gravity necessary to keep you attached to the earth?"

"No," she answered. "Post gravida, from _gravidus_, Latin for 'laden' or 'pregnant'. _Post _as in after or behind," she explained, then searches his face expectantly.

"Uh—you mean, like, post partum?"

"Precisely. Post delivery. And yes, that is what I mean. I struggle with distinguishing between fact-based concerns or thoughts and those that are simply products of my hormonally-distorted psyche. They feel like real feelings and thoughts, though they are foreign to me."

"Okay, when that happens, do what we're doing. Do your reality check. That's the cogs in the behavior therapy, remember?"

"Cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, Booth. Yes! Checking concerns against tangible facts."

"Bingo, Baby!" Exclaimed Booth. "We have a winner. You think you can do that? I can help you … when I'm around."

"I would appreciate that. There's also Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, remember? Acknowledging that there will be undesirable circumstances and events, but that the upset that accompanies them is controllable by the recipient. So, though I may experience discomfort, I do not have to be disturbed by it. I can simply acknowledge the discomfort and choose not to engage with it, not allowing it to rule me."

"Exactly. You are so smart. How'd you get to be so smart," he teases her. "Don't answer that!" He said before she can fly into a verbal recitation of her curriculum vitea.

Brennan rotated her head so she could look up at him. "You are a wonderful person, Booth," she said, warmed by her own admission. "I am fortunate to have you as my mate."

"I'm one awesome guy," he said in a smarmy tone. "And whenever my baby needs babying …" he said, sliding down under the covers so they were face to face, "… you just let me know, because I'm the guy for the job." He gave her his charming smile and watched as she leaned her head back and chuckled at him.

"Do you know what my first thought was when you held her up right after she was born?"

"What?"

"I thought, _Wow, there was actually a baby in there!"_She looked at Booth in wonder. "How irrational! Of course, there was a baby in there, right? Hadn't I felt her kicking and growing? Hadn't I pushed her through the birth canal? But, suddenly it was-I don't know how to describe it-"

"Miraculous?" Booth suggested, blinking and smiling peacefully.

"Yes," she agreed with a slow nod. "Miraculous."

"Hey, I just thought of something we can do now that you aren't pregnant anymore!" he blurted excitedly.

"Hmmm. Ha, what?" She asked, a gleam in her eye.

"Come here," he said rolling onto his side to face her. She mirrored his position. He slid a leg under one of hers and slipped a hand under her other knee, pulling it over his other leg. Legs intertwined, he scooted a little closer, dove a hand under her neck, the other arm around her midsection and pulled her to his chest, holding her firmly without smothering either one of them. "Look at that, huh?" He smiled pleasantly as he dragged his fingertips across her back, her waist, her hip, the outside of her thigh, as he groaned satisfyingly.

"Hoooooh, yeah!" Brennan groaned right along with him, closing her eyes and releasing a throaty chuckle through an enormous grin. "You can fit your arms all the way around me again," she said sweetly in a delighted tone.

"Ahhhhh," he sighed, closing his own eyes and squeezing her to him once again. "Ohhhhh, I love this. Bliss." he murmured, kissing her on the nose, then her neck, and then warmly and languorously on her delicious lips. "Mmmmmmmmmmm." He kissed her once more on the forehead then rested his chin in her hair when she snuggled into his chest.

"I do quite enjoy this," she said up against his tee shirt after a moment, "and I did miss this terribly, my Boothy cocoon. I did indeed miss this!"

They lay in silence for several moments as they relaxed fully against each other. "We're parents," sighed Booth after a while. "You and me. Together."

"Mmmmmmm," she answered him. "But, Booth?"

"Mmmm?"

"While I do love this—it is quite wonderful—I can't sleep like this—"

"Right. Right, right," he said, releasing her to roll over and face away from. At the same time that she wiggled backward against him in her new position, he snuggled up against her backside and slipped his arm around her waist again, then nuzzled her neck before laying his head back on his pillow and falling into a deep, hard sleep ... for about fourteen minutes, at least, until Christine woke them up for their first middle of the night feeding.

* * *

><p>Happy Bones Day! Tonight we get to see Parker in an episode, so we'll see how they REALLY handle the mixed family business!<p>

Would you be so kind as to drop a note in the review section? I would appreciate hearing from you ~ even just to say hello!

THANK YOU to the Early reviews of the previous chapter, **Parker's Story!**

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>Andrew Lillith yoshimi0701 Ifawishofwonder Martreiya FaithinBones FaithinBones justlittleirish Memo3197 kdgteacher7<br>Eryngrace94 DWBBFan Dyna63 dovepage fofie675 OhSnapItzAmelie Mire MichiUssi bogie31757 musingteacher  
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**These people rock my world on a regular basis and make me want to write MORE!**


	9. Parker's Crime and Punishment

**RE-POSTING AFTER THE CRACK-DOWN BY FF ON REAL PEOPLE BEING USED IN FICS.**

**A/N** I wrote what you will read below as the middle section to a conversation I was having in my back yard one day with the actor who plays Booth on Bones. I've since learned that non-fictitious people written into the story are a no-no here on FF. My research shows that writing a real person into a fiction is not illegal out in the world, but that doesn't mean you can't get sued for it. I am sure FF wants to avoid any possibility of that. Besides, this is FanFiction's sandbox ... and I, we, are beneficiaries of what they provide. So - we play by the rules, folks, and everybody's happy.

So - here's the abbreviated version. I hope you enjoy it!

Thank you, again, for the advance readings of Diko (as always!) DWBBFAN, and BostonLegalGirl, my girls who talk me off ledges when necessary. Bless you all, yes, I mean you, too, gentle reader, for reading a MoxieGirl fiction!

**_~MoxieGirl _**  
><strong><em>~MoxieGirl44 on Twitter<em>**

_P.S. In case there is any question, this and every chapter, is complete fiction. The Bones characters don't belong to me and neither does Mr. David Boreanaz. Those fine properties belong to Hart Hansen and Jamie Bergman, respectively. Lucky ducks._

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><p><strong>Parker's Crime and Punishment<strong>

_Set to immediately follow Season 7, Episode 10, The Warrior in the Wuss_

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><p><strong>The Meaning in the Episode: <em>Parker's Crime and Punishment<em>**

Booth and Parker sit around a corner of the kitchen table eating ice cream while Brennan nurses Christine and puts her down for her first night time nap.

"Dad, why aren't you eating? Don't tell me you don't like chocolate ice cream any more?"

"No, it's not that, Parker. Somethin's buggin' me."

"What?"

Booth shrugs with one shoulder and a sideways tip of his head as he lazily makes gullies across a scoop of ice cream melting in his bowl. Sucking the chocolate off his spoon, he shoves it into the larger of two scoops as if planting a flagpole. He slowly pushes the bowl away and sits back, crossing his arms.

Parker continues to suck spoonfuls of ice cream off his own spoon and studies his father's demeanor. _Uh oh. This is the look Dad gets before he's about to make a speech, _he thinks. "Come on, Dad. I've never seen you push away a bowl of ice cream. Chocolate chocolate chip, no less. Do you have your period?" Once it's out of his mouth, Parker's face goes blank. It's almost as if he'd just said a four-letter fence word for the first time in front of an adult. _Dangit, dangit, dangit, _he curses himself. _I'muna get it now! _He tells himself.

"What?" Booth starts at the period comment, his eyes flying open wide. He stares at Parker as if he were looking at an alien that just flew out of the sky and sat down next to him.

"Come on, Dad. I'm not a kid anymore," Parker chuckles half-heartedly, trying to make light of it, still assessing the degree of damage he may have inflicted on his dad's respect for him. "We got the movie in health class this year. I know all about periods and ovalries, and bleeding and stuff," he begins his explanation. He feels like he's in a canoe trying to paddle away from a waterfall. "Since we had the movie, Mom's been really talking about stuff a lot. When she's ministrating, she can't stand cold things. She wants them, but can't stand them. There's been a lot of really good wasted ice cream at our house this week," he chuffs, looking down at the ice cream beginning to pool around his own abandoned spoon.

"Parker, boys don't have those things. Men, _especially,_ don't have those things!"

"I know that! I was teasing you, geez!" He rolls his eyes and giggles.

Booth looks at his son, one eyebrow shadowing his eye, the other trying to join his hairline, and several serious vertical lines creasing the skin between his eyes. "Parker –"

"At school? Ever since we saw that movie about maturity? 'Welcome to the New You', it was called and it shows a hairy armpit when it starts. it's kinda gross," he says wrinkling his nose. "Well, the girls? They saw a different movie than the boys did. Apparently theirs was more interesting. Cody Digger? He has a twin sister and she saw the other movie, so we all paid him a quarter to ask his sister what it was about. He totally hit pay dirt. Though it still doesn't make much sense to me, honestly, Dad," he says, bewildered.

Booth can only imagine where this might be headed and suppresses a nervous smirk. He recalls Rebecca mentioning the letter all the parents were sent in advance about the health education section covering sexual maturity. Covering his mouth with his hand and leaning his elbows on the table, he nods at Parker. "And-?"

"Well, now whenever a guy's being a jerk, or even if he's not, he's totally in danger of another guy sayin', 'Hey idiot, you got your period, or what?'" Parker pauses for a moment. "It's a total slam, Dad. Everyone else laughs. It's like the worst slam you can imagine. Even worse than being called 'cool'," he says, semi-seriously, unsure if he should let his dad know that he's been on both side of this particular brand of teasing.

Booth stares blankly at his son, the corners of his eyes curving up just a bit. Before he can say anything, Parker jumps in again.

"And there's really no good comeback. You can't even accuse the guy who's teasing you if he's got his training bra yet! Cuz then, the other guys will say you're havin' a bromance with that guy and looking at him in the locker room at gym class." Parker shudders.

"What's wrong with being called cool?" Booth asks.

"Dad," says Parker, leveling a narrow stare at Booth. "C-o-o-l stands for **_Constipated Over-weighted Old Lady!_** Would you want to be called that?"

Booth chuckles. "Nope. But I would never be called that."

"You're not one of my classmates. Most of them are idiots, at least the guys are."

"Oh …. to be young again," muses Booth in exaggerated wistfulness. He sighs and lifts the spoon from his melting mound of chocolate chocolate chip ice cream. He scrapes off the top layer of soup to get to some of the still slightly congealed dessert underneath. "Parker?"

"Yeah?" Parker has gone back to polishing off his bowl before he'll have to use a straw to get at it all.

"What's buggin' me here, is that there's something not right about what happened today."

Parker looks up at his dad, a sloppy spoon halfway to his mouth. He lowers the spoon and begins to slowly stir his ice cream, scraping the spoon along the bottom of the stoneware bowl. He waits, looking down.

"Parker," starts Booth, pressing his lips together in thought. He presses his hands together, overlapping only his thumbs as if in prayer. He's looking at his thumbnails. "You know I am proud of you, right?" He looks sideways at Parker.

Parker nods, already feeling guilty, though he's not sure what for.

"You're one of the best kids I know. You've earned my trust, buddy."

"I know, dad," he says, recognizing this as the build-up to God knows what.

"Now, it takes a lot to earn someone's trust, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Is it safe to assume that my trust is important to you?"

"Yeah, Dad! Totally! Some of my friends—their parents don't trust them at all because of something stupid—at least that's what they say—but their dad's don't have guns—though I've told them—"

"Parker!" Booth gives him the _'what the hell?' _stare, then shakes his head. "What does my gun have to do with it?" He looks at his son with a disturbed, queer expression on his face. "Never mind. What you did today, for your sister?" Booth chuffs. "Well, that was very creative—"

"I knew you'd like it, Dad, but I'm hearing a 'but' coming at me."

Booth pressed his lips together again and mused at how much Parker is like he himself was at his age.

"Okay. Listen. I want you to think about how you went about it—"

"You mean how I put it together?"

"No, not exactly," Booth said, dropping his chin to his chest, then looking over at his son. "About how the way you did it looked to Bones and me." He let that drop, and watched his son. "And what we may have thought because we didn't know what you were doing."

"Oh," said Parker, feeling a twinge of oncoming panic at the back of his neck.

"There are a couple of things wrong with this picture, Parker. First of all, we do trust you, but there's been a whole lot of shake-up around here lately, okay? The move to this house, your … ha … really long stay over seas, Christine being born, right?"

"Yeah?" Parker's ice cream has been forgotten as he listens to Booth with rapt attention.

"No matter how close a family can be, drastic changes can affect its members in unpredictable ways. We gotta look out for each other—"

"I know that, Dad," says Parker, his shoulders slumping.

"Here's the thing, though. When one of the family members starts to act funny, to do things they normally wouldn't do, sometimes it's a clue that there's something wrong, that maybe they aren't adjusting to changes very well. Sometimes it means they are angry or hurt or just plain feeling crazy."

"I'm not feeling crazy, Dad."

"I know. I know, Parker. But you haven't been telling us much. You've been keeping to yourself, going out without telling the sitter—and then you lied to me, son. We have promised never to lie to each other, right?"

"I didn't really go out, Dad, I was just down the hall. I didn't want you to suspect anything—"

"Do you think it matters whether or not you actually did what you told me in a lie that you had done?"

"No," says Parker, hanging his head.

"A lie is a lie—"

"I know. I'm really sorry, Dad—"

"Well, when we see all these things, it leads us to suspect something else is going on."

"Uh, like what?" He feels a bit nervous now. Nervous and confused.

"Well, these parenting books tell us that sometimes a kid can get jealous when a baby comes into the family," says Booth, shrugging.

"I told you, I'm not jealous," insists Parker.

"I understand that, Parker, but look at this from our point of view. Bones finds family photos cut to bits and hidden in the floor in your closet. Along with the cut up photos, she finds her own clothing, ripped apart as well—"

"I didn't mean to rip it—"

"Parker, you took off her Jeffersonian patch! What do you think that made Bones feel like? And when did you start calling her Temperance, anyway? You can still call her Bones."

"But she's not my mom—"

"What does that have to do with anything, Parker? I never said you have to call her 'Mom', Parker. And I guess Temperance is fine … it just surprised me. Then there's my gym bag. You didn't ask me if you could take that apart either. That was not your property. It wasn't yours to deface."

Parker's eyes grow large with guilty realization of how this must have looked to Bones and to his father. He hissed in a lungful of air as worry creased his brow.

"In legal terms, Parker, that's vandalism," says Booth, matter-of-factly, cocking his head to the side and tossing his hands up in the air.

"But I knew it was one of her old work coats, and you don't even use that bag anymore, Dad."

Booth shakes his head, grimacing. "No go, buddy. That wouldn't hold a teaspoon of Kool-Aid in court." Booth lets that sink in for a moment while little beads of perspiration bead on Parker's young brow.

"The photo—that was one of my favorites, but I'd given it to you. You can do anything you want with it. But if I found a family photo cut up at a crime scene, I would assume that someone was very angry at the people on the photo, and I'd be right."

"Oh."

"Yeah. And the RC truck? It looked like you'd destroyed it, Parker. You and I have had lots of fun with that thing. We put it together the day you got it, remember. I was so excited to show you I got it working again … and here Bones finds it in pieces…" Booth smirks at his son, not without compassion.

Parker pales and looks like he might barf.

"Now. How do you think that looked to Bones and me? Oh, and pile on top of that the fact that she's a brand new mom and that's making her unpredictably emotional—and she thought maybe her baby was in danger. Which frightened her and confused her, because the Parker she's always known and loved would never, ever do anything like that. Ever."

"And I never would, Dad! You've gotta believe me!"

"I do believe you, son. I do. But even I was shocked and worried. And concerned, little man. I was really, really worried about you. I've missed you so much and I thought maybe I should have gone out to see you, or called more, or maybe I'd screwed up somehow—"

"Dad, it had nothing to do with that. I just wanted to surprise you."

"I know that now, but I didn't two hours ago. You could have still surprised us, but asked to use our things."

"But you would have figured it out, Dad!"

"No. Not in a million years would I have figured out what you were doing, I swear," insists Booth. "You could have come to me and said, '_Dad, can I have this patch off your old gym bag,_ or, _Bones, do you mind if I use this old coat of yours and do you mind if I take the patch off for a project I'm doing?'"_

"Right, and you wouldn't have figured it out?" He says dubiously.

"Nope—and if you didn't want me and Bones comparing notes, you could have asked each of us not to mention it to the other. We would have agreed, as long as we knew you weren't making a voodoo doll or something. You could have just said it was a surprise. We'd have left it at that."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh. Now, the sitter? You could have let her in on this. You are never, NEVER, to disappear without letting her know where you are. You got that? You scared her half to death, Parker. She is responsible for your life while she is here. Imagine how awful she must have felt, thinking she'd lost you. Especially after what we've been through with the gravedigger. Remember that?"

"I really screwed up, didn't I, Dad?" Chagrins Parker.

"Your heart was in the right place, little man, but your method left a lot to be desired."

"I'm really sorry," he says, scooting back his chair and coming over to hug his father.

"Thanks, Buddy. You know what you have to do now?"

"Take the mobile apart and fix all the stuff I destroyed?"

"No—not at all! You need to apologize to Bones. She's trying really hard to be a good mom, and step mom, and I think she might feel bad for thinking you had done something mean. But she had every right to feel that way. Do you understand?"

"I do now, Dad," says Parker, sitting back down. "Do you have a straw? I'd like to drink my ice cream now," he says, dejectedly.

"Don't get down on yourself for this, okay? You're learning. We're all learning. That's what families do, right? They help each other learn. That's out job." Booth tousles Parker's hair as he gets up to find two straws.

"Is there going to be a punishment?"

"I don't know. Let's talk to Bones about it. See what she says."

"When will she be done with Christine?"

"Here she comes now," says Booth, standing up and smiling at Brennan. "Ice cream?"

"Oh, yes, please," she says, winking down at Parker who's noisily slurping up the last of his ice cream through a twisty straw.

As he gets out the ice cream and starts to scoop it over at the kitchen island, Booth nods at Brennan, letting her know he and Parker have had their talk. Brennan nods back almost imperceptibly at Booth, then sits down across from Booth's bowl, diagonally from Parker. She rests her forearms on the table.

"Can I have a glass of water as well, Booth?"

"Certainly," he says, giving her an expectant nod and tilting his head toward Parker who isn't paying any attention to his father at all.

"So, how's it going, Parker?"

Parker looks down at his messy bowl and wipes his chin with a napkin Brennan hands him from the center of the table. He swallows, and pinches his lips together. Brennan can't help thinking that he looks a lot like Booth when he does that.

"Bones, I'm really—really—sorry," he says, looking repentant.

"Parker," she begins. "I was very worried about you," she says, looking over at Booth who is making himself busier than is required for getting out just two scoops of ice cream. "We both were worried about you. And, I have to admit, I was frightened by what I saw."

"I promise I would never do anything to hurt Christine. I already love her, Temperance, I mean, Bones," he says pleadingly. "Can you forgive me? I promise I will never do that again, and never take your stuff—or, or destroy it—without asking first. I just didn't think."

"It's okay, Parker," says Booth from across the kitchen.

"It most certainly is not okay," says Bones adroitly. "But it's not an insurmountable challenge we have before us. Your father has detailed every one of our concerns? The accused is always read the charges brought against him in a court of law, Parker. You know what you did that was wrong?"

Parker sighed. "I took things that didn't belong to me. I vandalized the things I took. I cut up several photos and left a mess in my closet. I disassembled a toy without asking Dad. I didn't tell the sitter where I was one time; it was only one time, I swear," he says, looking between Booth and Brennan. "And—I lied to Dad."

"Wow. Is there evidence supporting these crimes? Are there witnesses?" Brennan stares at Parker expectantly.

"There's lots of evidence," he mumbles back, his head lolling to the side, his lips bunching up on one side of his mouth so his dimple is pronounced and looking _very _apologetic. "And three witnesses, excluding me."

"So, what do you plead, sir?" Asks Brennan, accepting her bowl of ice cream from Booth.

"Guilty," admits Parker.

"Guilty as charged!" Announces Brennan, knocking her spoon against her bowl. "What shall the sentence be?" Brennan looks across the table at Booth.

"Well, why don't we let the accused—"

"The accused who readily admits his guilt—"

"What do you think should be your punishment, little man?"

Parker looks from Brennan to his dad, and back to Brennan.

"Diaper duty?" He says, anxiously as his face crinkles into a frown.

Brennan and Booth smile across the table at each other. "Diaper duty!" The shout in unison.

"Not—changing diapers—just emptying the diaper pail every day."

"For as long as you are here—" adds Booth.

"For as long as I am here," mumbles Parker, then smiles sheepishly at both adults. "Can I have more ice cream, Dad?"

"Get the prisoner more ice cream, Booth!" Brennan laughs with a mouthful of chocolate cream.

"See, I told you this would all work out, Bones!"

"I was the one who said it would work out!" She insists.

"You did not, you thought I was being too harsh on this first time offense!"

"Ugh! You never remember things right!"

"I never remember—? Me? You're the one—"

"Just, get me my ice cream, please!"

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><p><em>Thank you to my peeps who take the time and give back a little bit everytime they read a MoxieGirl work!<em>

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><em>jbcrace14, strawberry79, hillhappy, philly cheese dude, Dyna63<em>

_A **Big Huge** thank you to my two newest Reviewers:** philly cheese dude** and **boneslover29**_

_Folks, I wrote this one for me, really. Hopefully, I won't get any more visits and I can continue focusing on TWATH.  
>Do you hear that, Mr. B? Just keep your twinkly smiles and your, well, just, you stay where you're supposed to be ~<br>I got work to do! Huge S.W.A.K._

_**~MoxieGirl**_


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